(Press release) Longensis, a startup based in Latvia and Hong Hong, has taken home the main prize at TechChill – 10,000 EUR, no strings attached.
Gelatex and VREACH divide 250,000 EUR in angel investment from the pan-Baltic syndicate. The leading Baltic tech and startup event brought together over 1,700 attendees from over 600 different organizations from 29 countries, with 178 speakers taking the virtual stage.
Longenesis is a B2B startup offering a platform to biomedical organizations to reduce the length of clinical trials. This is done through enabling direct communication for safe data curation and compliant, consent-enabled biomedical data utilization for research.
In addition to the 10,000 eur main prize, for the first time ever, a pan-Baltic angel investor syndicate made up of LatBAN, EstBAN, LitBAN, and .Cocoon. pledged up to 250,000 EUR in investment. The funds were divided between two winners, Gelatex (EE), and VREACH (LV). Gelatex is an Estonian startup that creates sustainable gelatin nanofabric technology. VREACH is a VR-based autism rehabilitation startup from Latvia.
Prizes were also awarded by AWS, who provided 3 startups with 5,000 USD-worth of AWS credits. Those winning startups were Algomo (UK), Typebot (LV), and Fintelligence (LV). Httpool awarded a 3,000 EUR advertising budget for Facebook and LinkedIn to Gelatex. The Draper University prize, a full scholarship to the Summer 2021 Hero Training Program by Draper University, 12,000 USD in value, went to Gelatex.
This year there was a record number of applicants for the Fifty Founders Battle, with over 200 startups vying for the win. Of those, 50 founders were chosen to pitch at TechChill, and five made it to the finals, each in their own vertical, of Sustainability, Fintech, B2B, AI&ML, and Hardware, IoT, and Robotics. The 5 finalists were:
- Gelatex (EE) – Sustainability
- AVA (AU) – Fintech
- Cellbox Labs (LV) – Hardware, IoT, Robotics
- Longenesis (LV/HK) – B2B
- Algomo (UK) – AI&ML
“It was a tough decision for the jury. We considered the long-term impact, clarity of value proposition to the target customers and stakeholders involved, as well as uniqueness. Of these parameters, Longenesis came out as the Fifty Founder Battle winner. That being said, the other four startups provided very tough competition,” said Marili Merendi, Principal at Karma Ventures.
The final jury was made up of four investors from around the world; Andris K. Bērziņš, Managing Partner at Change Ventures, Arvydas Blože, Investment Manager at Practica Capital, Marili Merendi, Principal at Karma Ventures, Tuomas Kosonen, Partner at Inventure, and Suffiyan Malik, Program Manager at Draper University.
This was the 10th TechChill, marking a decade of developing the startup community in Latvia. Occurring for the first time in a digital format, the event brought together over 1,700 attendees from 29 countries, 178 speakers, with over 600 organizations represented, including VCs, startups, universities, corporates, and more. Over two weeks the event hosted 16 side events, 13 masterclasses, 11 roundtables, and 47 on-stage sessions.
Next year TechChill will return to its traditional February date, inviting the Baltic, European and international startup community to save the date for the 17-18th of February, 2022.
