KTH students second in Europe’s largest business plan competition

The weekend of the 29–30 May, SolarCool represented the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurship (SSES) in the biggest and oldest business plan competition in Europe, the European Business Plan of the Year Competition in Lisbon. In a competition concerning business plans and presenting the company to risk capitalists, MBA students from ten of the best MBA universities in Europe competed against each other. After two rounds of presentations and several difficult questions from the jury, SolarCool ended up in second place.

The two KTH students - Mikael Andersson and Robert Lyngman – who operate SolarCool are just now part of the company incubator run by the Stockholm School of Economics, the SSE Business Lab. They have learned practical entrepreneurship from experienced coaches. With their innovative product, they have proposed a solution to a major problem for billions of people.

“More than 478 million people in India do not have access to electricity today. A fridge would provide them with better access to food and medicine as well as liberating time for other activities such as education or paid work. Gathering and dealing with food takes far too much of the day for poor people, with access to a fridge they can spend their time on other activities to help them break the poverty cycle. As there is no electricity the only environmentally friendly alternative is solar-powered fridges but these are much too expensive and complicated today. Our product is simple and cheap,” says Mikael Andersson, who is one of the founders of SolarCool.

SolarCool’s products have been developed through a unique combination of different technologies. Robert Lyngman, who is the other founder of SolarCool, explains:

“By combining widely-known absorption cooling technology from 1922 with newly developed nanomaterials simple, inexpensive solar fridges can be manufactured with no moving parts and no need for electrical power. This technology combines twentieth century research with the very latest innovations - both produced at KTH where we all studied for Master’s of Science degrees.”

Steve Lewis who chaired the jury of the European Business Plan of the Year Competition thinks that it is fantastic to see a business concept that contributes considerable social benefit and turns a profit at the same time.

“The only thing I have to say is that you have underestimated the value of your company,” he states.

Håkan Soold