Orange Fab celebrates the start of Innovation Labs 2024

The start of Innovation Labs was marked with 30-hour Hackathon held in the Central Library of the National University of Science and Technology POLITEHNICA Bucharest (UNSTPB). This year for the program registered an unprecedented number of 106 teams from Bucharest, Brasov, Constanta, Sibiu, Cluj-Napoca. That means more than 360 young people passionate to make a positive change with their innovative ideas in areas of Agriculture, Blockchain, Cybersecurity, DevTools, Digital Health, Lifestyle, Retail & E-commerce, Smart City & Industry 4.0 and Sustainability.

In the first day of Hackathon in 1-minute pitch 106 teams presented to partners, potential investors, media and embassy representatives their product ideas that address real user needs in various business sectors, nationally and globally. After the pitches, the jury members had the opportunity to get closer to the ideas of the teams they were interested in and, if they were sound and promising, to vote for them. 59 teams selected as a result of crowd voting presented their improved version of their product and business strategy to the jury and audience on the next day, Sunday 10 March. The presentation included a technical and business demonstration, followed by a 2-minute elevator pitch and a Q&A session.

The jury had the challenging task of selecting the 35 most promising teams to enter the next stage. 2 weeks later 18 teams from Cluj-Napoca, 16 - from Iași, and 15 - from Timișoara have been added to that list. Among the selected teams the most popular business vertical turned out to be Lifestyle, occupying almost a quarter of all teams - 23%.

Thus, 84 teams entered 3-month development and mentoring program the goal of which is to accelerate ideas to MVP (Minimum Viable Product) stage, helping teams bring their ideas into a validated form for real customers, and also to point them towards the right funding opportunities.

On 29 May, the Innovation Labs program culminated with a Startup Fair and Demo Day, where 16 finalists showcased their progress to partners, media, investors, and the public. After brilliant pitches of brilliant ideas and challenging jury deliberations, 6 winners were announced: investment prize from Early Game Ventures took Zero Code (350k Euro) and Pentest Copilot (150k Euro), Rhythm Touch was awarded with Grand Prize, Swift Sifght was acknowldeged as the Best Emerging Startup, while SeedPods and Photon Spark won Best Product and Public Vote Awards, correspondingly.

Orange Fab congratulates winners and all members of this unforgattable season, who dreamt, planned, created and passionately presented their ideas! We would also like to express our admiration to amazing Innovation Labs team who went above and beyond to #makeitreal.