On 10 February, this year’s finalists will pitch their startup to a panel of experts and entrepreneurs, hoping to win either the Start-Up Award or the Impact Award. The Start-Up Award (€35,000) is for student entrepreneurs who focus on commercially promising solutions to global challenges and develop products and services based on expertise of Wageningen University and Research. The Impact Award (€15,000) is for student entrepreneurs who want to make an impact on global environmental challenges or in developing sustainable solutions.
Mushrooms
The winner of the 2022 Impact Award was Urban Funghi, with a pitch about growing mushrooms on organic straw in abandoned buildings. This makes smart use of that space and the unique properties of the mushrooms.
DNA
In 2021, Scope Biosciences won the Start-up Award with a pitch on applying the gene editing technology CRISPR-Cas to make diagnoses. This developed a kit that enables farmers to test their crops for diseases themselves. The company is also working with GenDx on faster diagnoses for organ transplants.
Waste separation
The first Start-Up Award in 2020 went to Greencovery, which developed a patented separation technology to filter valuable ingredients from waste streams. The €35,000 from the Start-Up Award enabled the company to open its own lab at the Wageningen Business Park. Greencovery recently obtained its second patent and is now working on the development of a demo plant. The company raised €500,000 for this in a recent investment round.
The AtlasInvest Entrepreneurship Grant is a collaboration between the company AtlasInvest, University Fund Wageningen and StartHub Wageningen.
Image: deepadesigns/Shutterstock
