INCUBATION

Regardless of their faculty, industry sector or stage of their project, any of the University students researchers, recent graduates and staff members can unlock doors to the whole range of trainings and services offered by the University of Luxembourg Incubator. The Incubator has become the bridge connecting University research to innovation by widening horizons for our students and researchers. We inspire our changemakers and student leaders to act definitively.

Every startup project receives tailored support and advice via expert mentoring fitted to their individual needs. Additionally, the startups can leverage the local and international network of the Incubator to test their product’s market-fit, accelerate their growth, enhance their visibility and find suitable investor connects.

The startups greatly benefit from the local startup ecosystem in Luxembourg. The University of Luxembourg Incubator acts as a bridge to also ensure that - when ready - mature startups transition to the local partner incubators or acceleration programmes and benefit from their market positioning.

— Incubator is not just a place, it is a community of people passionate about innovation

VENTURE

THE PACKAGE FOR THE STARTUPS INCUBATED AT THE BELVAL CAMPUS COMPRISES OF:

Office space

Access to the full infrastructure at the

Incubator building

Access to the greater University infrastructure

Mentoring with experienced entrepreneurs and professional experts

Access to a widespread business network inside Luxembourg and even beyond the national borders

Access to the Media lab with the latest equipment for filming and photography

Administrative support

Visibility through the University of

Luxembourg media channels

Access to business books and magazines library

Visibility via showcases at other events organized by the Incubator and their partners

Access to state of the art prototyping facilities at our Fab lab

OUR STARTUPS

BIOTECH

DEEPBIOMODELING ORGANOTHERAPEUTICS

EDTECH

CHECKMATH EDUGAMITEC LETZMATH WEDOO

FINTECH

DIGITALUS

FOODTECH

FOOD4ALL (F4A) HAPPY LOCAL HONEYVERSE SCHILZ

GREENTECH

LETZ GREEN RENEWABLES OUR CHOICE

HEALTHTECH

NIUM

INDUSTRY AUTOMATION

ASETS-LUX COGNIFYER DROPSLAB EMPOTECH TECHNOPTIZ

LEGAL

DEVSEIS ZESTYLAWYER

SOCIAL

ALLGEMENGWUEL AGENCE GOLDENME INTANGIBLE WORLD

HERITAGE ORGANIZATION ASBL PATLUX PEASZY MEET YOUR UNBORN VISIBILITY STEM AFRICA

SPORTS

THE TENNIS AGENCY

TOURISM

SIMPLEVIU

DR. GREGOR WALTERSDORFER

CEO

— “VMS programme helped me to summarize and reflect on what I did over the last few years and what the potential could be” ALLGEMENGWUEL AGENCE

Allgemengwuel Agence (Agency for the Common Good) specialises in sustainability reporting and incentivises companies to maximize their contribution to the common good. Allgemengwuel Agence helps their clients to define the common good, to analyse their contributions, to make progress, to communicate their efforts, and to receive ECG certifications. Allgemengwuel Agence organises workshops, conducts interviews, writes reports and spreads the word through social media and the press.

The founder of Allgemengwuel Agence, Dr. Gregor Waltersdorfer, four years ago became self-employed with the topic of his PhD from the University of Luxembourg.

Gregor is particularly proud that Allgemengwuel Agence helped the first commune in Luxembourg to become a commune for economics. “There were only nine out of the worldwide communes from one German speaking countries. It is the first Luxembourgish.” – he says. “The clients of Allgemengwuel Agence become more credible and future-proof while also increasing their customer loyalty and brand value. Along the way, the Allgemengwuel Agence clients lead by example to build a better economy, which is for the benefit of all.”

ASETS-LUX

ASETS-LUX is creating web-based cloud solutions for the Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) sector to accelerate design engineering cycles by 40%. ASETS-LUX assists engineering companies in a smart way in their early pre-feed, feed optimizations and layout designs for on shore and off-shore plants. Using its smart web-based platform to simplify and arrive at the solution quick.

The founder of ASETS-LUX Ashwini Oke, a 20 years background in the petrochemical and oil & gas sector. Being in the technical sector she realized there is no single data centric software that addresses the need in a holistic manner.

The product is now ready to cater to pre-feed and feed stage for engineering companies. Having identified this need, ASETS-LUX set upon its mission with extensive support from FNR.

This innovative solution “Made in Luxembourg” is now set to revolutionize the EPC sector. In order to change mindsets and raise awareness of new digital technologies and adopting newer technology in this EPC service sector, ASETS-LUX has collaborated with College of Engineering Pune to launch India’s first primary “EPC” postgraduate diploma. Large companies are now exhibiting keen interest in this approach where ASETS-LUX has set up a number of pilot projects.

ASHWINI OKE

CEO

— “My experience with the Incubator is great! Well-organized meeting rooms and a very warm staff with motivating management”

HIMADRI PATHAK

CEO

— “The Ideation Camp was the reason why I started my own business, without that I would not have the confidence to do it” CHECKMATH

CheckMath is an app that scans and checks the student’s steps to any math problem giving them valuable feedback. Currently, CheckMath assists students aged 10 to 16 all the way from basic addition to logarithms.

CheckMath was born from the struggles of the present and past generations in mathematics. Now students can get automated solutions to their questions on their phones and yet it lacks feedback on a personal level. CheckMath gives students the autonomy to explore mathematical problems in their own creative ways and provides personalized feedback, thus motivating them in their self-learning journey.

Himadri Pathak, CEO of CheckMath, was a computer science student doing research at SnT when during her Master’s she took part in the Ideation Camp as well as Startup Weekend Luxembourg, both of which she won! “That gave me the motivation to do something of my own.” – she says.

Later in the journey, she was joined by Sankalp Ghatpande who she met while working at SnT. In just a few years, CheckMath app has users from many countries across the world. In 2021 the new release of CheckMath app was successfully launched by the team and has fundraised from Luxembourgish and European institutions.

COGNIFYER

Cognifyer is a provider of embedded network design tools in the automotive and aerospace domains. Cognifyer develops technologies, software IP blocks and complete automated design flows at any stage of maturity: concept, proof-of-concept implementation, pilot or production. Cognifyer is unlocking the power of generative design for electrical/electronic architectures with design automation technologies based on goals and domain knowledge.

CEO of Cognifyer, Dr. Nicolas Navet, Deputy-Head of the Department of Computer Science and Professor in Computer Science, says that his primary objective is to contribute to the techniques, tools and computing platforms that will make it possible to build provably safe systems in a time, resources and cost-efficient manner.

Serial entrepreneur, Nicolas already had two companies before he established Cognifyer at the University of Luxembourg Incubator in 2018. Nicolas believes that it was a good timing to start such a business in terms of techniques in the industry as it took them only two years to apply such techniques to design systems.

Now Nicolas is working on scaling up with external partners together with Marina Guttiérez who has joined the company in 2021.

DR. NICOLAS NAVET

CEO

— “University of Luxembourg Incubator helped me to facilitate the creation of the company and now I am surrounded by like-minded people which is going to be beneficial in terms of building the team”

Cognifyer

DR. SEBASTIEN DE LANDTSHEER

CEO

— “My experience with the Incubator has been very positive: nearly free office in the startup environment and access to the mentoring” DEEPBIOMODELING

DeepBioModeling is a biology-focused data science company with a strong motivation to impact the development of personalized medicine. The startup is dedicated to helping researchers worldwide to achieve the best outcomes and create translatable medical innovations with robust, timely results and expert advice. DeepBioModeling collaborates with pharma, biotech, and academia to validate targets, repurpose existing drugs, study mechanisms of action, predict biomarkers, and facilitate drug discovery.

Their goal is to establish a series of integrated analysis pipelines to combine datasets with existing knowledge to leverage high-level features into a machine learning framework. The startup delivers this technology to fasten the development of innovative cures and diagnostic tools for the benefit of individual patients.

Dr. Sebastien De Landtsheer, founder of DeepBioModeling, originally a biologist who then decided to study informatics, and now uses his expertise in software development to achieve the current standards in software engineering to help his peer scientists to make their new ideas and algorithms available to the scientific community in a way that maximizes collaborations and citations.

DEVSEIS

Devseis provides user-friendly automated services to European enterprises to deal with substantially increasing compliance costs of GDPR. Devseis delivers software as a service solution which examines the personal data processing operations of the enterprise to identify and assess risks that can violate rights and freedom of a person.

Dr. Muhammad Umer Wasim, the founder and CEO of Devseis, has over 10 years of multinational experience that extends in the domain of information and communication technology, law, and innovation. He has acquired an operational knowledge with dedicated experience in information security and data privacy audits, consultancy, risk advisory, and legal compliance (GDPR).

With the support of his four experienced advisory partners, Umer set up Devseis in 2018. The startup now combines world-class expertise with high-quality services to help startups and other enterprises to meet their business challenges in the domain of information security and data privacy. The services include professional audit, consulting, risk advisory, and legal compliance (GDPR), regardless of field of activity or industry sector.

In 2021 Devseis officially launched two products: GRaaS (GDPR Reporting as a Service) and TrustChain. The main focus of GRaaS is to maximise protection of personal data that reside within the company, whereas TrustChain has been developed with the aim to ensure protection for personal data that is shared with the contractors and subcontractors.

DR. MUHAMMAD UMER WASIM

CEO

— “The great thing about the Incubator is that they really made me feel very confident. They are super helpful!”

DR. BELTRAN FIZ

CEO

— “ We have a unique position in Luxembourg because it is competitive and small enough that people can get you in touch with the right people. The Incubator is ideal for this, they can provide you the contacts that help you to the next step”

DIGITALUS

The digitalUs technology provides a solution to automate and significantly speed-up the background screening process of individuals. It relies on a novel methodology to match the same entity across multiple publicly data sources. AI-based entity resolution technology of digitalUs connects billions of data points across public data sources to create a Unified Digital Profile of a single individual or legal entity without ambiguity.

Dr. Beltran Fiz, CEO of digitalUs, through his own experience realised how much information he has left online across multiple sites and decided to use open source intelligence to identify, match and analyse his online digital footprint. With his team of professionals, he is now working towards creating a people search engine designed to empower compliance officers in their KYC/AML duties by providing a holistic view of the customers public digital footprint, while providing an audit trail and list of used sources.

GDPR compliant by design, digitalUs can launch searches upon request and no data is stored locally. The solution is powered by unique technology, tested during the research phase, that taps into the wealth of data, publicly available, including watchlists, business registers, social media, and much more to produce a unified digital footprint.

“I believe that digitalUs can be a real time saver for compliance officers that are currently overburdened with the time-consuming task of searching for information manually,” says Beltran. “There is a plethora of open and publicly available data sources that can assist compliance officers in their regulatory duties and current KYC/AML technologies are not taking full advantage of them”.

DROPSLAB

Dropslab Technologies provides a smart assistance for workforce in medical and industrial applications. Their product addresses the issues of missing production expertise, slow process documentation and inspection reports.

CEO & Founder of Dropslab Dr. Meysam Minoufekr says: “Our assistance platform provides the right information at the right time adaptive to the situation of the workforce. It uses object detection based on artificial intelligence, where you look at the scene and you get context knowledge according to your view field, indicating how and what you have to do. Our solution gives guidance using augmented reality and includes remote support for telemonitoring”.

The user does not need to have any programming skills to be able to use the assistance platform. The Dropslab solution is intelligent and situation-based and gives the guidance depending on the circumstances. “Clients can directly login, create an account and use assistance based on augmented reality. The platform runs on the cloud, you can just start designing a process guidance and use the remote support feature right away.” adds Meysam.

DR. MEYSAM MINOUFEKR

CEO

— “I wanted to have a solution which has an absolute impact on medical and industrial domains and to be able to implement it in such a way that I think is most feasible”

GIRA SZAKMÁR

CEO

— “The University of Luxembourg Incubator was always really supportive of me and my startup. The events and mentors bring a lot of value and being surrounded by peers really helps as well”

EDUGAMITEC

EduGamiTec is bridging education with new technologies. The idea was first born out of the HIVE’s flagship event Ideation Camp. EduGamiTec’s solution Memomoti enables users to insert personalized educational content into entertaining games. It improves the motivation for learning and transforms children’s screen time into meaningful outcomes.

Memomoti is an easy-to-use platform where you can take any content you need to memorize and insert it into digital games to increase motivation in learning. The game statistics and AI driven assessment system adjust the difficulty of the games to each child’s current needs. The machine learning based system is first fed by the educational content provided and validated by the users, with the future capability of automatically ingesting open source educational data pools.

In 2020 EduGamiTec reached a huge milestone by securing its first round of funding and bringing Neil Ward, former COO of Skype, onto its board. In 2021 they joined MindCET Accelerator and pitched on their Demo Day.

Their aspiration is to bring personalised education into the lives of every person regardless of their age and background in a way that they do not even notice that they were taught and enjoy the process.

EMPOTECH

EmpoTech provides custom robotic solutions for industry and academia. As AI and Robotics are emerging technologies that are transforming large industries such as construction, transportation or even space exploration, their ability to automate and accelerate different processes across industries have put these technologies as a key to compete in a global economy. Today, most businesses have to adapt their processes and workflows to existing technologies, which limits its profitability and scalability. EmpoTech allows these technologies to fit customer needs, not the other way around. By building custom robotic solutions to the customer’s problem, they’re able to scale cost-effectively and reach a higher productmarket fit.

Manuel Castillo-Lopez, founder of EmpoTech, came up with the idea while he was doing his PhD in robotics at the University of Luxembourg. “Essentially, there is a gap between the innovations produced by academia and the technology that companies can adopt. We step up to support both parties to close that gap, establishing sustained competitive advantage through innovation.” Manuel says.

MANUEL CASTILLO-LOPEZ

Founder

— “The Incubator is tightly related to University and we are an innovative company that needs innovation as much as we need the industry”

ILANA DEVILLERS

CEO

— “All the help that I needed – the VMS gave it. This service is really important because they match you with mentors who can help you with your specific question”

FOOD4ALL (F4A)

F4A provides a win-win solution to the issue of food waste on a supermarket level. F4A services allow their partners to generate profit out of their losses while enabling their customers to have access to best before-date products at reduced prices on a larger scale.

Ilana Devillers of the University of Luxembourg joined VMS when she was still a student. Living on a tight budget and trying to eat healthy, she also saw that supermarkets were wasting a lot of products that could be put to a better use. Ilana felt that it was time to act and created F4A as her response to both issues – food waste and demand for more accessible healthy food.

Now F4A services directly contribute to reducing the food waste. Moreover, F4A’s daily recipes are perfectly matched with the products available to help final users to better their culinary skills and to eat healthier.

F4A were awarded “Startup of the Year” in 2019 and was amongst the 10 worldwide finalists selected to be part of the Nasdaq COVID-19 Solution Summer Milestone Makers Programme in 2020. They also partnered with Delhaize the same year.

In 2021 F4A launched a takeaway service with sixty restaurateurs and brands like L’Opéra, Victorine, L’Osteria, Cocottes, Kaempff-Kohler, and La Table du Pain, featuring Luxembourg supermodel Sonia Gleis in their campaign. F4A also joined prestigious acceleration programme Rockstart AgriFood.

GOLDENME

GoldenMe’s vision is to prevent loneliness in older age through digital education.

Their active community for people aged 55+ revolves around events to improve the members’ Digital Literacy: lectures and workshops with topics like social media, smartphone use and similar.

Bringing younger and older generations together is a focal point of the non-profit organization because the moment one learns from the other brings both generations closer together and creates empathy. This happens through the events called „SmartphoneCafés“ of GoldenMe where students take time to answer seniors’ questions around smartphone, tablet or laptop use. „SmartphoneCafés“ have happened across different place in the country so far, leaving both seniors and younger people happy about the newly gained knowledge on the one hand and the social interaction and solidarity on the other hand.

The two founders, Mara Kroth and Johannes Heuschkel, started their entrepreneurial journey at the University of Luxembourg, where Mara won the Ideation Camp in 2018.

The team decided to work for customers aged 55+, pre-retirees or already retired, because this age group is mostly affected by not being able to digitally participate in various processes, may it be private, social or administrative.

In 2021 GoldenMe got a financial aid of Œuvre Nationale de Secours Grande-Duchesse Charlotte.

MARA KROTH AND JOHANNES HEUSCHKEL

Co-founders

— “VMS gives you an external point of view which is very helpful because mentors can see our progress and they challenge us while providing an objective feedback”

SAM ABDI

CEO

— “University of Luxembourg Incubator allows students to have an office for an affordable price to process the registering of their startups in Luxembourg”

HAPPY LOCAL

Happy Local is a mobile platform that favors farmers who produce local products and helps to distribute those products to the local consumers. Happy Local focuses on organic, plastic-free and zero waste for a better consumption of products and food in order to take care of the planet and secure a better future for everyone.

To provide local producers with required support, Happy Local helps to increase their visibility and revenue while providing a better transparency of food resources. Sam Abdi, founder of Happy Local, is an IT student at the University of Luxembourg who is also passionate about connecting nature and technology using his computer science knowledge.

“Consuming local products has many social, financial and environmental advantages: it encourages local economy, helps create jobs, preserve heritage, reduce carbon footprints of food transportation, reduce food waste of supermarkets, keep the cash flow within the local economy...” – says Sam. “Consumers are choosing to buy locally more and more, whether it is in their own city on a daily basis or while traveling abroad.”

HONEYVERSE

HoneyVerse is a social enterprise which aims to boost the artisan farming of honey in European villages. HoneyVerse stands on 3 pillars - sustainability, ethics, and quality - which means no harm to bees and their ecosystem, fair wages for beekeepers, and the purest honey for consumers.

The founder of HoneyVerse, Daniela Dicusar, was raised in a Moldovan village where people do mostly agriculture. “I come from a family where beekeeping was mainly a hobby,” - she says. “My father tried to turn it into a revenue recurring family business, but the increased maintenance costs and unfair competition on that binary market prevented him from achieving this. What he needed was a little bit of help to commercialize the honey and be paid fairly for his hard work.” Daniela believes that her story is one of the many in Europe and is looking to perpetrate sustainable beekeeping in European villages, bringing to the conscious consumers the purest honey and the pride of contributing to a big change.

HoneyVerse partners exclusively with a select handful of village-based beekeepers to offer high quality certified natural honey. They ensure that there are no noisy highways, factories, or chemically fertilized fields within tens of kilometers away from the beehives. HoneyVerse’s honey is free of antibiotics and pesticides. Their vision is to become the main representative of village honey brands which operate under sustainable beekeeping practices.

DANIELA DICUSAR

Founder

— “Entrepreneurship is about networking, working a lot, exposing yourself to different communities and improving your social skills”

ADHAM AL-SAYYAD

President

— “Ever since we were hosted by the Incubator, their close mentorship alongside their strong network connections have significantly boosted our success”

INTANGIBLE WORLD HERITAGE ORGANIZATION ASBL

Intangible World Heritage Organization ASBL preserves and promotes cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge of sustainable practices, adapts them to bridge with modernity demands, and develops tools to remove barriers of exchange. IWHO aims at enriching accumulative knowledge by documenting, preserving and promoting endangered intangible heritage, supporting cultural diversity and removing barriers of exchange as well as empowering marginalized communities and endorsing sustainable development.

The founder of IWHO, Adham Al-Sayyad, is a Doctoral Candidate in Manufacturing Engineering at the University of Luxembourg. Adham’s passion is traditional culture which made him spend a few years in social justice culture. He is also a musician playing on traditional instruments from his home country, Egypt. “Similar to bio-diversity, cultural diversity is essential to continued life on this planet. The fragility of a globally homogenized paradigm lies in its rigidity to change, putting the global community in serious risks when threatened by environmental or socioeconomic challenges.” – says Adham.

Recently, IWHO received an agreement for their project “BELONG” to participate in European Capital of Cultures (ESCH22). BELONG aims at utilizing global folkloric arts to create synergies between multicultural and multidisciplinary artistic forms.

LETZ GREEN RENEWABLES

The solar energy equipment supplier, Letz Green Renewables, specialises in sector coupling. Their engineering expertise allows them to bring together mobility, production, and consumption. Letz Green Renewables don’t just install the solar systems, they also know how these systems should be linked together, which technologies should be used, and what could be improved in the future.

The two founders, Dr. Sasan Rafii-Tabrizi and Sebastien Latz, met while doing their PhDs at the University of Luxembourg and quickly discovered their mutual interest in renewable energy. They decided to start a company together in Luxembourg but quickly received a lot of interest from the Greater Region. “In Luxembourg there’s a green government and a lot of state aid for people who want to build solar panels so they can get around 25% refund,” says Sebastien. “In Germany it’s pretty conservative at the moment but there are a lot of people interested in the topic. I think 50% of our projects now are in Germany”.

The company is growing rapidly and their agile model is to blame for such a swift success. “If you are talking to other companies in the region to build your solar system, you will have to wait up to eight to nine months. This is right now our biggest advantage, we are fast compared to our competitors.” – says Sasan.

DR. SASAN RAFII-TABRIZI AND SEBASTIEN LATZ

Founders — “For us, the biggest help from the Incubator was access to its network”

DR. TAHEREH PAZOUKI

CEO

— “As an entrepreneur, you mostly find yourself alone and knowing that there are people that you can just write or call and talk to them and share your problems, this is really nice”

LETZMATH

Magrid, the flagship product of a startup called LetzMath, is an effective pedagogical programme for improving the development of early visual-spatial and mathematical abilities. Magrid provides an individual learning environment in which a student can repeat instructions for their individual learning pace to increase learners’ confidence in math.

Tahereh Pazouki, founder of LetzMath, was doing her PhD at the Department of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences of University of Luxembourg working on why there are young students in Luxembourg that are not performing as well in mathematical abilities in comparison to other countries. Through the scientific testing, Tahereh identified that this is related to the number of languages which students in Luxembourg have to master and it has the biggest impact on nonnative students.

Based on those findings, Magrid was created to address those issues. By visualizing the mathematical concepts and ideas, Magrid makes early mathematical instruction intuitive and accessible to all children regardless of their language proficiency. The interactive design of Magrid, allows students to take an active role in building their knowledge that boosts learners’ self-esteem, self-awareness, and engagement in the learning process.

LetzMath became the first Luxembourgish company to ever be selected for WSA and became a champion in their category at WSA 2021. They were also selected for Fit4Start and won EIB social innovation prize.

MEET YOUR UNBORN

Meet Your Unborn is a startup helping pregnant women build a better connection to their baby in the womb.

The CEO and co-founder of Meet Your Unborn, Arabella Strassner, experienced prenatal bonding herself when she was pregnant with her daughter. “It changed everything in my life,” she says. “I experienced what it means to have a connection to a person who I don’t know or see yet but I feel in my body.” Arabella then learned to do the prenatal bonding professionally, including psychotherapy as well as pre- and perinatal therapy.

While usually the prenatal bonding sessions are done live, Meet Your Unborn provides an opportunity for an online experience as the sessions are pre-recorded. “This allows pregnant women to do the course in their own rhythm whenever and wherever they can do it, as often as they want to,” says Arabella. “I want to make prenatal bonding accessible to every soon-to-be mom. The baby in the womb develops its personality via the prenatal bonding with the mother at a very early stage of life. Overall, prenatal bonding helps on three aspects. Firstly, it contributes to having a healthier life, better relationships with the mother, the father, and the family. Secondly, it is good for the immune system and health in general, as well as the body and the brain. Finally, it is also important for all the relationships coming after birth, be it as a child, a grown-up or when someone becomes a parent themselves.”

ARABELLA STRASSNER

CEO and Co-Founder

— “With VMS, I really feel supported at every stage. I feel very grateful that there is someone who believes in our idea and supports it every day”

DR. ALBERTO NORONHA AND DR. ADAM SELAMNIA

Co-Founders

— “We benefit a lot from staying at the Incubator, it provides us the soft start and easy transition from being a student or being a researcher to becoming an entrepreneur”

NIUM

Nium provides personalized dietary recommendations based on each individual’s unique metabolism. They predict personal metabolic response using a computational model and utilize this technology for nutritional recommendations for the prevention and treatment of diet-related diseases. Nium’s platform is the basis of a service that delivers a metabolic and gut microbiome analysis supporting decision in clinical nutrition to health professionals and individuals. This will allow personalized nutritional recommendations through an interactive dashboard such as mobile app.

Dr. Alberto Noronha, co-founder and CEO of Nium, through his research project identified that individual responses to food are difficult to predict and wanted to change this. His partner, Dr. Adam Selamnia, cofounder and Director of Business Development, has an almost 20 years professional journey as a serial entrepreneur and Strategic Advisor in the field of HealthTech. Their vision for the future of healthcare is that each individual will have access to the best tailored treatment possible and the nutrition will play a central role in this with Nium being one of the leaders in that change.

In 2021 Nium has developed its app Nutrida which will provide personalized nutritional management for patients suffering from cancer and diet-related diseases.

ORGANOTHERAPEUTICS

OrganoTherapeutics uses cutting-edge humanspecific mini-brains for the discovery and development of effective drug candidates targeting Parkinson’s disease. OrganoTherapeutics screens new molecules on their proprietary human-specific mini-brains which represent a model mimicking faithfully the human Parkinson’s disease pathology.

Two founders of OrganoTherapeutics, Dr. Javier Jarazo and Dr. Jens Schwamborn, started to work on this problematic as a part of Javier’s PhD project which Jens was supervising. Javier is an expert in stem cell models, phenotyping screening, and computational data analysis. Jens is a professor at the University of Luxembourg, neuroscientist expert in stem cell research and Parkinson’s disease research.

OrganoTherapeutics aims at developing new drug candidates against Parkinson’s disease which are tested in state-of-the-art 3D patient models. OrganoTherapeutics has developed first own proprietary drug candidates and has access to attractive libraries for further screening.

OrganoTheraputics recently won the Rising Start-up Award of BioVaria and successfully graduated from Fit4Start #10.

DR. JAVIER JARAZO

Co-Founder

— “Incubator helped us a lot. For example, when we needed some legal support, etc… Incubator was always ready to make the link with people that could help us”

FILIP WESTERLUND

CEO

— “With the support of Incubator, I managed to accelerate the business in a way that I could never have done by myself” OUR CHOICE

OUR CHOICE aims to become a platform for change, encouraging others to shift from a linear economy to a restorative, circular economy while inspiring the next generation to rethink, redesign and build a positive future. The company is committed to helping reduce pressure on the environment, cut down on the draining of resources and raw materials while stimulating innovation.

As a circular visionary, Filip and his team at OUR CHOICE, created the world’s first circular and fully recyclable sneaker that is plastic free. The company launched a very successful Kickstarter campaign at the end of 2020, reaching its funding goals within the first 15 hours. The campaign received great interest from the media and Filip was named a “Young Social Impact Hero” by Thrive Global and featured in Authority magazine as well as dubbed a Circular Economy Pioneer by FashionUnited.uk.

Since the Kickstarter launch, OUR CHOICE won the Circular By Design Challenge by Luxinnovation. The win, announced by Luxembourg’s Minister of Finance, Franz Fayot marks the start of a partnership with Goodyear to develop new products. OUR CHOICE also won the EY Start up Series: Circular Economy and was declared the most influential Circular Economy Startup in the Benelux region. Recently, the company won Paperjam Startup Stories Round 4 and successfully closed its second crowdfunding campaign targeting the French speaking market.

PATLUX

Parents as Trainers Luxembourg aka PATLUX believes that “learning by doing” is much more effective than “learning by reading“, “learning by listening” or “learning by watching”. PATLUX is an elite forum which gives an opportunity for parents to engage with the children during weekends. During PATLUX events parents and children work on various fields - it could be on cars, on logistics, on software, or anything else.

Dr. Sakthivel Manikandan, founder of PATLUX, is a parent himself and knows for fact that learning by doing is the best way for children to learn. “PATLUX is a unique social and a non-profit organization which serves for foundation education learning methodologies,” he says. “For any innovation in any field, science and mathematics remain indispensable needs. Parents are none other than the professionals who work in various fields where these two topics are applied to their day-to-day work.”

The central vision of PATLUX is to help and integrate parents and children to learn the fundamentals of science and mathematics in an innovative way.

DR. SAKTHIVEL M. MANIKANDAN

Volunteer

— “This is a calculated challenge, which could be addressed effectively with the help of existing education ecosystem in place in Luxembourg”

ALICIA KHELILI

CEO

— “VMS helps you to focus on your main goal. It gives you experience from great mentors, the strategy, and confidence that you might be lacking as a young entrepreneur”

PEASZY

Peaszy is a social app created to connect like-minded people. With Peaszy, individuals get matched to others according to similar interests and hobbies and access to an activity organizer with suggestions of things to do and places to go. Users can also register with their current friends and find activities together.

When the CEO of Peaszy, Alicia Khelili, arrived in Luxembourg a few years ago, she found it difficult to meet new people outside of her colleagues. She also felt like it was very time consuming to find interesting and new things to do during her leisure time. She did some research and realized that Luxembourg’s rate of loneliness was the highest in all Europe. It got her thinking about how she could fix this and this is how Peaszy was born, with the vision of bringing people together.

Alicia and her team are part of Venture Mentoring Service of the University of Luxembourg Incubator. «VMS gives you the structure you need,» - says Alicia. «When you start this wild journey that is entrepreneurship, you find yourself with one project but with many ideas around it and it can easily go all over the place in a moment when you need to stay focused. You are going to meet a lot of people along the way with different opinions on your project, it’s important to make the difference between valuable and not so valuable feedback. This is another reason why you need to stay focused and not deviate from your main goal. It’s reassuring to know you are not alone and have access to wise advice at VMS on this regard among so many other things».

SCHILZ

Schilz is an alternative drink to alcohol and soda beverages, made of herbal infusion, citrus fruits, flowers and cannabis sativa, having a pleasant bitter and fresh taste and providing natural relaxation.

The two co-founders of Schilz – Joe Sapienza and Sergio Sionis – identified a gap in the beverage market and decided to find a solution. “There’s a lack of drinks that are non-alcoholic and at the same time not sugary”, says Joe. “It’s a very polarized market and this lack of alternatives drives the consumer’s choices. Schilz is pleasant to drink, has 0% alcohol, 0% sugar and it’s refreshing and healthy. Basically, you can drink as much Schilz as you want!”.

“In the last years there is a relentless rising awareness regarding health and wellbeing,” says Sergio. “Schiltz is all natural, has a distinctive taste and is low in calories. People are looking for alternatives to the classical after-work drinks and are switching to other beverages.”

The product is currently being tested in bars of Luxembourg City.

JOE SAPIENZA AND SERGIO SIONIS

Co-Founders

— “VMS for us is like a lighthouse that helps us to see things from external perspective and with an independent judgment”

PHILIPPE MORGADO

CEO

— “Having an office, mentoring and guidance means that I don’t have to do everything or most of the things on my own” SIMPLEVIU

Simpleviu places and manages recreational cabins in remote destinations around Luxembourg and combines it with diverse touristic services. The unique features of all the Simpleviu cabins are the glass walls which allow for panoramic views and a unique connection with nature. The whole concept embodies a sustainable and circular economy approach.

Philippe Morgado, the founder of Simpleviu, has a strong passion for travelling. Through the extensive market research during his Master’s in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Luxembourg, Philippe identified that even though Luxembourg has a beautiful nature, there is a low level of satisfaction with touristic accommodations within the country and a big need for innovation in the tourism sector. “There are so many beautiful destinations in Luxembourg but many locals and international tourists never actually made it there due to many reasons like lack of innovation. If we look at some problems that the tourism industry is facing and add the problems that COVD-19 is causing, I strongly believe that innovating and daring new solutions is a must.” – says Phillipe.

Simpleviu believes that their cabins are a perfect solution for a romantic getaway as well as hiking trips, wellness and relaxation for the Luxembourgers who did not before consider their home country as a holiday destination.

Simpleviu was awarded the Chamber of Commerce’s first prize for the best business plan and locked its first deal with the Municipality of Dudelange.

TECHNOPTIZ

TechnOptiz is providing high-tech and innovative engineering solutions to biogas plants using software sensors which allow estimation of unmeasurable or costly variables of the anaerobic digestion process. The information which the sensors deliver gives more visibility to monitor and optimize the biogas production. Combining the process data with the estimation results, TechnOptiz provides a continuous diagnosis of the biological health of the process.

This limits the risk of acidification in real time and avoids system failure. TechnOptiz can also give recommendations about the ideal feeding rate and load to optimize biogas production. To best meet the storing capacities for biogas in short and long term, they can provide a pacification tool as well. Their mission is to maximize the client’s revenues quickly and incrementally delivering working products through safety, robustness and maintainability, while never compromising on quality.

CEO of TechnOptiz, Dr. Khadidja Chaib Draa, who until recently was doing her PhD at the University of Luxembourg, now decided to apply her expertise to her own business venture.

DR. KHADIDJA CHAIB DRAA

CEO

— “Training sessions and networking events really helped me to improve my confidence as an entrepreneur”

REZA ARJOMAND

CEO

— “I really appreciate everything that Incubator and Entrepreneurship Programme did to me already through VMS and the network is a valuable asset to me too”

THE TENNIS AGENCY

The Tennis Agency is a sport management agency which focuses on assisting professional athletes to reach their goals easier, faster and more effectively. The Tennis Agency also provides marketing and sponsorship opportunities for businesses, brands and other stakeholders in the sport industry.

Reza Arjomand, a serial entrepreneur, professional tennis coach and a founder of The Tennis Agency, through his own experience and that of his friends identified a gap in the industry related to the sponsorship issues which professional athletes often face in their career.

As a part of his dissertation for the Master’s degree from the University of Luxembourg, Reza decided to do a business plan with an extensive market research for his startup The Tennis Agency which would eventually address this identified need. Now Reza graduated from the University with market size for his startup already estimated and competitor analyses done.

Currently, The Tennis Agency is hosted at the University of Luxembourg Incubator and is part of its Venture Mentoring Service.

VISIBILITY STEM AFRICA

Visibility STEM Africa is a community of Africans working in STEM worldwide. Their mission is to help making African STEM more visible while also providing new opportunities for collaboration.

Nathasia Muwanigwa, founder of Visibility STEM Africa, is a scientist who moved from Zimbabwe a while ago and always felt that there is a lack of representation of Africans and black people in the science field here, in Europe. Through her activity on Twitter she met many fellow Africans in STEM as well as her partner, Natasa Lazarevic, and together they created VSA. They are now helping scientists, engineers and mathematicians from across the African continent to give them visibility and inspire future generations. “Not only do we highlight Africans in STEM fields, we also have an Opportunities page on our website, where we link people to organizations or funding bodies that can help them find scholarships, funding etc.” Nathasia said, “We want to be able to empower Africans pursuing STEM fields with information that could be useful for them to move forward in their careers.”

Visibility STEM Africa’s first conference “STEM For Us, By Us” was a 2-day online event which brought together 200 Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora, and showcased the brilliant work and journeys of Africans in STEM across different disciplines. To date, Visibility STEM Africa has highlighted over 100 Africans in STEM via their website and social media channels.

NATHASIA MUWANIGWA

CEO

— “My participation in the Ideation Camp was really the catalyst for me getting the confidence to wanting to turn my idea into a startup”

TOM OTTELÉ

CEO

— “I joined the incubator to get a companion in the process to found my first company. It was a good idea” WEDOO

Wedoo is an online platform where students can find tutors who could teach in different languages and for different study levels in various disciplines. Via Wedoo, a student can enter criteria and see the list of tutors matching their search, book a session and pay directly via the platform.

Founder of Wedoo, Tom Ottelé, came up with the solution while still doing his Master’s at the University of Luxembourg. “There are many private associations in Luxembourg but they take a big chunk of the tutorial fee. Wedoo is a platform that enables users to find a solution to that problem. It is crucial for the tutor while also being convenient for the students”.

Wedoo vision is to extend in future to other services. “I want to first see my startup recognized in Luxembourg so that when an individual wants to give tutoring sessions, they immediately sign up at Wedoo. It also has a potential to be covering other services, for example, fitness trainers can sign up, photographers can sign up, etc. However, I wanted to start with a niche market and it would be tutoring sessions because I see this huge problem in Luxembourg that this whole market is inefficient here.

ZESTYLAWYER

Zestylawyer has evolved in 2021 to become the leading online legal service in its test market. Under the name of ViralHelp.me it operates in Estonia and the Baltics to help people overcome the consequences of the lockdowns and to efficiently defend their legal rights and to avoid discrimination. This solution is instrumental to both sides: people and governments, clients and merchants etc.

It works as an online platform that resolves issues and problems that concern groups of people, such as unlawful detentions of demonstrators etc. It offers solutions that any concerned user may download against a moderate fee. Upon answering just a few questions the user receives a legally binding complaint letter directed to the proper authority. That is escalated automatically to the ombudsman in the absence of the proper answer from the authorities. ViralHelp.me platform also shows online statistics of how each authority handles the complaints of citizens.

The user can download health statements with QR code and mask wear exempt certificate that eases daily life and allows access to events that otherwise would be inaccessible. Such documents have become a routine accessory in intra-European travel, with customers across Europe and Turkey.

DR. ALEX BOGDANOV

CEO

— “The Incubator sessions have been instrumental in building our communication approach that increased the reach to tens of thousands of users in just a few months”

ZESTYLAWYER

MAKING THE NEWS IN 2021

IDEATION CAMP ALL OVER THE NEWS

BUILD YOUR OWN INTERNSHIP COURSE IN INFOGREEN ARTICLE

OUR STARTUPS NEWS

OrganoTherapeutics won the Rising Startup Award of BioVaria, article by Paperjam GoldenMe services featured in Tageblatt

Success story of ViralHelp by ZestyLawer in Paperjam article Our social impact hero Filip Westerlund from Our Choice featured in Authority Magazine

STARTUP EXPERIENCE IS AN ESSENTIAL LEARNING

From a PhD student to a startup founder to European Advisor at Luxinnovation. We asked Dr. François Sprumont about his exciting career and what he learned from his experience running a startup.

How the idea came about to create Movesion Luxembourg?

It was in 2015. At the time I was doing a PhD at the University of Luxembourg. With my PhD supervisor we wanted to see what we could do in the future, what were the possibilities to continue to work together. I could see that I was not really made for academia. I mean, research is nice and interesting but I wanted to do something else. And then we said, why not to create a private company and continue collaboration but a bit differently and try to focus on helping companies.

At the time, we were also in contact with the Italian company Movesion. They wanted to expand their activities and we decided to combine our skills, our knowledge and create a joint venture. I finished my PhD in September 2017 and then we incorporated Movesion Luxembourg in April 2018. We wanted to do mobility management which is about helping the employers willing to improve the mobility of their staff members and to be precise the commuting mobility, so between home and work. In Luxembourg - and worldwide - these trips generate some negative effects like stress of the employee, lack of productivity, congestion, loss of time, parking spaces that cost a lot and are difficult to find, etc.

How did you find this change, from the academic background into entrepreneurship?

It’s funny because I always thought I would never be an entrepreneur. I found it really difficult, I was not good with accounting, I was a bit afraid of administrative stuff and, during my PhD, if my phone was ringing, I was not taking the call because I didn’t want to be disturbed. When you are a researcher you like to be in a quiet environment where you can read, write, and process your data. You are in your own bubble. You don’t really need or want too many distractions.

When you are an entrepreneur, and you want to sell your solutions, you have to send thousands of emails, make thousands of phone calls, often calling someone that you don’t know and this person does not know you either, does not know your company, or your service. The first time is not easy, because you get so many rejections.

What would you recommend to a young entrepreneur?

What is important is to be aware of your own weaknesses, understand that you lack skills - sales skills, communication skills – and that’s fine. If you have weaknesses and you are aware of them, you can do something about it - go to physical training or read books, go to networking events. And you have to force yourself to talk to people that you don’t know. You have to force yourself to attend events and talk about you, your company, and your service.

Do big pitch competition like ICT Spring, Paperjam Startup Stories, specific field events. You have to check for information, you have to check for key factors, and then you have to follow the news, what is being organised, and don’t forget to register.

You should also ask if you can do a presentation, if you can talk about your activity. There are pitching events and there are pure networking events. You have to do both, you have to use all the different channels and you have to choose the channel that will allow you to meet your target audience or the people that you want to meet. If you want to meet CEOs of companies, I think Paperjam events are the best. If you want to have some visibility, some communication about you, then you absolutely have to go to ICT Spring event.

How did you come to be hosted in the Incubator?

I was in contact with Siva and Pranjul years before the Incubator was created, we were discussing how University could help young entrepreneurs. I understood that I should keep an eye on what they were doing which is always dynamic. I had to develop my business spirit which was nonexistent at that time

I could talk to Siva and Pranjul whenever I want, they were always available. I knew that if I was facing an issue, I could just ask them. As an entrepreneur, I was alone but still I felt that I was in a team, which is nice. Support does not always have to be formal or structured. Looking back at your past, from PhD going into entrepreneurship, is there something that you would do differently?

Maybe at the very beginning I would have taken some entrepreneurship courses or would have started to read business books earlier. I think this would lead to gaining some knowledge and to having some kind of background.

Because if you don’t know anything about business, which was my case, and then suddenly you’re supposed to discuss a company incorporation document, the status of the company, it’s really difficult because you don’t have the experience.

During the time with Movesion Luxembourg, we had some projects, we worked with clients, we had some visibility. I was working with some interns and things were quite exciting. I feel the main reason things are not continuing is because we never took the time to discuss the expectations among the co-founders: what were the responsibilities of everyone?

One of the mistakes was this expectation management, and who should do what - that was not clear enough. This misunderstanding between the co-founders has led to a situation where no positive evolution for Movesion was possible and closing the company appeared to be the only solution.

It’s not that we went bankrupt, it’s not that COVID was killing us. It’s just that we realized that we were taking different paths. What we were expecting at the very beginning during the incorporation didn’t materialize, it just didn’t happen. We also realized that it would have been difficult to fix the situation.

In the end, closing the company was the logical next step. I would never blame an entrepreneur closing a company or changing the business model drastically. I mean, we take some risks and a positive outcome is never guaranteed. I am quite proud of what we did, the way we helped our customers and now I am still helping companies but in a different way.

BUILDING BRIDGES

In 2021, we continued establishing relevant partnerships to advance our missions with opportunities for our community of students to engage inclusively in the global entrepreneurial and startup environment. We are so excited to share with you our partnerships and international outreach!

Catalyst Luxembourg: University of Luxembourg Incubator along with collaborators from LIH, LCSB, CHL has joined the Catalyst Europe network and has launched the Catalyst Luxembourg Fellowship to support next generation of biomedical innovators in their journey of designing solutions for the most challenging problems

StartUB!: As a partner on the EITHealth funded StartUB! -a Digital Health accelerator programme, we offered courses in ‘Prototyping for startup success’ as well as ‘How to build the right team for startup success” to students of University of Barcelona and National University of Ireland. We continue to mentor the winning team,

Choowa, towards launching their app for psoriasis patients

H-Impact: Students and staff members from the University of Luxembourg participated in the EITHealth funded H-Impact - digital health accelerator programme organised in collaboration with Ghent and Delft University

Circular By Design: The incubator partnered with Luxinnovation to offer an additional award to the winning team -

Kombutex. Kombutex has since joined the University startup ecosystem and is benefitting from the trainings and mentoring offered to the University startups

Miami University: a student delegation from Miami University took the opportunity to closely work with students from the University of Luxembourg during Ideation Camp 8. It was an incredible experience on both sides with opportunities to work in interdisciplinary and intercontinental teams while being supported by international industry leaders

Enactus: Enactus is a global organisation supporting the most promising social projects started by students at partner universities. We were invited to jury the Enactus France finals and we hope to continue this partnership with the Enactus network in the next years

GovTech Lab: Accelerating public services innovation is the mantra of the GovTech Lab, a joint initiative of the

Ministry for Digitalisation and the Government IT Centre (CTIE). The first Call for solutions: Bye bye robots! in which anyone including students of the University of Luxembourg had the chance to apply, has been very successful with a Proof of Concept completed and solution currently implemented by the CTIE

PaperJam Startup Stories: Our startups had the most interesting opportunity to pitch at the stage of Startup Stories.

We extremely value this opportunity to bring the startup community to Campus Belval annually and to showcase our top talent and projects

University Josepf Ki-Zerbo in Burkina Faso: in spite of the global COVID pandemic, the University Joseph Ki-Zerbo organised a second Ideation Camp on July 2021 bringing 300 participants in total. After a tough selection, eleven teams were created with 55 selected participants supported by 23 mentors. Congrats to all of them and thanks to the Fondation Veuve Emile Metz-Tesch for your generous support

CONTACT US

Get in touch with the HIVE team and ask for a meeting to discuss potential collaboration or your startup project email: incubator@uni.lu

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