Three KTH projects share 2.7 million SEK in Vinnova funding
Three of 25 projects that get funding in this year's call for Vinnova's Innovative Startups Step Two were founded at KTH. One of them is Propida, a platform that digitizes the flow between property owners and contractors.
- Getting funding is a quality stamp, says founder Ida Reinvalds.
Every year, Vinnova’s funding call Innovative Startups supports small, newly founded companies that want to grow in Sweden and have an innovative business idea that can withstand international competition. The funding is divided into two stages, where Innovative startups stage 2 is aimed at the companies that have completed projects within stage 1. In stage 2, co-financing of at least 10% is required.
Large portion of funding to KTH startup projects
Projects founded with support from KTH Innovation often do well in tough competition. Last year, people from KTH were behind 12 out of 168 startup projects that got funding in stage 1, and this year, 12% of the funding in stage two goes to KTH projects. 25 project were chosen from a record number of 177 applicants.
- The high number of KTH projects that have been granted funding shows the high quality of our startups, and that they have been well prepared and verified in KTH Innovation’s process, says Daniel Carlsson, Business Development Coach at KTH Innovation.
Founded by students and researchers
The three KTH projects that get funding are CelluXtreme, SustainLab and Propida. CelluXtreme and SustainLab have been founded by KTH researchers, and Propida by a student at KTH.
Strong bio-based fibers
CelluXtreme commercializes new technology for spinning super-strong bio-based fibers that can compete with carbon and glass fiber. The company was founded by researchers Daniel Söderberg, Lars Wågberg and Fredrik Lundell, who are both active in the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. For example, the fibers can be used to produce more sustainable implants, lighter vehicles, or recyclable wind turbines. CelluXtreme will use the funding to verify the market potential in two selected segments within the composite market.
Helping companies understand their sustainability data
SustainLab focuses on helping companies understand and use their sustainability data. The company was founded by KTH researcher Kamal Hakimzadeh and sustainability expert Maria Svantemark. They will use their 900 000 SEK to the develop automatic collection, processing, analysis and visualization of sustainability data throughout the value chain.
Digitizing the property industry
Ida Reinvalds builds Propida based on four years of experience in the property industry. As a student at KTH, she founded the company together with KTH alumnus Andreas Öberg with the goal of digitizing the real estate industry. The funding enables the team to test and develop the product and investigate the conditions for expanding the value proposition together with its customers. They will also draw up agreements to ensure compliance.
- We are so incredibly happy that we receive funding from Vinnova. In addition to the money contributing to us being able to accelerate the development of the platform, this is also a nice quality stamp that we are doing something really good, says Ida Reinvalds, CEO of Propida. ”
About the projects
CelluXtreme
CelluXtreme commercializes a new technology for spinning continuous filaments (fibers) from nanocellulose, a result of research at the Wallenberg Wood Science Center. The technology has been demonstrated on a lab scale, which has shown how it can be used to produce super-strong bio-based fibers that can compete with carbon and glass fibers but without the problem of landfills that these materials have. Another example of use is functionalization to support cell growth, which enables a material that can be used in medical applications.
Founders: Daniel Söderberg, Professor Fiber and Polymer Technology, Lars Wågberg, Professor in Fiber Technology & Fredrik Lundell, Professor in Fluid Mechanics
Propida
Propida is a SaaS company offering a B2B platform that enables simpler and more efficient ordering of property matters between property management and supplier. In today's analogous process, these orders are made by phone, email and text message, with lacking structure. With Propida, property managers can compare contractors, and all information and communication is gathered in one place. Property administrations can easily place a complete order and suppliers can follow and update the order with a few clicks. The tenants are kept up to date and can communicate directly with the suppliers.
Founders: Property management student Ida Reinvalds, who has four years of experience in the business & Andreas Öberg, a computer science alumnus from KTH with experience of building startups.
SustainLab
Understanding the impact of companies' sustainability is a manual and complex task, which makes it impossible to work with sustainability continuously and efficiently. SustainLab develops a platform for automating data collection and processing. In addition, the platform provides recommendations that help companies with their sustainability work. In this way, companies can spend time on measures instead of reports, and increase the pace of their sustainability work.
Founders: Kamal Hakimzadeh, PhD student in the group of distributed systems, at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) of KTH, & Maria Svantemark, formerly sustainability manager for a large, multinational company.