JIC STARCUBE teams arrive in Moravia to work on smart hives, thermostats and skateboards
Five foreign and four Czech teams have met up in Brno, where for three months they will be accelerating their projects at JIC STARCUBE. These nine were chosen from 169 candidates by a judging panel comprising the JIC and the accelerator’s technology partners. Appearing in the ranks of the finalists are projects from the CR, India, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Serbia. The Czech teams are representing Brno, Prague and Prostějov.
“We at AVG love the startups and try to help them because we too always learn something new. This year, we see projects like Beespy helping the natural world as well as playful projects focusing on children, like Smart Toybox or SkateTrace (quite fancy having this on my skateboard!). But our favourites are those projects focused on security and protection, and we are especially looking forward to cooperating with the teams joining the IoT security world, like Smart Capsa or CTI Software. These teams will have hard time tackling the tough competition they’re bound to face in a market with major players, but if they can differentiate themselves well enough, they’ll make it,” says Michal Polačko, Chief Product Manager for innovation products.
The teams now have their first workshops behind them. A special networking evening as part of the introductory boot-camp has also given them the opportunity meet up with JIC experts. “It’s great talking to startups about technology, but as soon as we get round to the topic of business, things take a turn for the worse. Discussions backed up by a clear business plan, however, make fast progress”, says Zdeněk Vrbka, Innovation Manager at Konica Minolta. Startups will have the chance to meet Zdeněk and his colleagues during October’s JIC Expert Day, an event that will be welcoming along dozens of experts from numerous business sectors.
Accepted teams:
BeeSpy (Czech Republic) is the name given to hive scales that keep a constant watch on the state of the colony. Everything can be monitored online by PC or smartphone, meaning there’s no need for inspections in the terrain. Beekeepers can keep an eye on which hives first start creating honey and so discover where next it would be best to site their hives to increase honey production.
CTI Software (Czech Republic) can instantly message you by voice, text message or email regarding any information picked up by sensors - whether that means exceeding a temperature limit on a production line, a rise in river levels or simply a crying child. The solution comes in the form of individualized services responding to individual bits of equipment in an IoT network
Free WiFi (Romania) helps companies build a database of clients connected to public Wi-Fi. The gathered data allows companies to make sense of their behaviour and target them with advertising campaigns based on client demographics, localization and behaviour.
LOYAGRAM(India) is a cloud based, real-time customer experience management & analytics platform which help businesses to capture actionable customer feedback across different touch-points through offline, online and social channels, proactively reducing churn to increase retention & revenue. Loyagram measures customer experience and tracks loyalty.
Minority (Russia) is a platform for team workflow management. It facilitates working with cyclical tasks and events better than the currently popular Trello and Asana.
smart capsa (Czech Republic) is an intelligent thermostat that stops households from needlessly heating the home and wasting energy. It measures temperature, humidity, pressure, air quality, motion, light intensity and electricity consumption. It is intuitively controlled from your smartphone, smartwatch or via messenger. Just send a simple inquiry and your thermostat will respond.
Smart Toybox (Serbia) encourages kids to tidy up. It responds whenever a child puts in the right item. Parents and children can also programme the box using an app linked by Wi-Fi, and so give the box a personality - making tidying up a developmental and fun activity. A campaign on Indiegogo is due for launch very soon.
SkateTrace (Czech Republic) is a smart device for skateboarders that allows them to track what tricks they have performed on their board. Progress becomes now clearly visible. Users can also use it for bragging to friends and challenging others who have also fitted the device.
Wavie(Slovakia) have developed a system for dimming and brightening lights using just a hand gesture. In future development of the product, the designers want to focus on creating an alternative switch that is capable of controlling the majority of smart bulbs on the market.
The technology partners of the accelerator are AVG, Honeywell, Konica Minolta, Microsoft and Y Soft. You can find out more information about the accelerator and how it is getting on at the STARCUBE website.
Contact: Martina Pouchlá, pouchla@jic.cz, +420 602 476 863
