Here are the ten startups presented at the Techstars Italia demo day

Ten startups: Empethy, Heloola, Pack, Tutornow and Wibo from Italy, Intuitivo and Preflet from Portugal, Automatika Robotics from France, Sirius from Holland and Sorair from the UK. A single demoday, that of Techstars at the Officine Grandi Riparazioni, scheduled for May 11th. A bit of the point and at the head of the fourth edition of Turin Cities of the Future, an accelerator born within Techstars: 1.8 million invested overall (the startups immediately receive a grant of 120 thousand dollars), thirteen weeks of meetings, growth and development, structured to support the next generation of entrepreneurs in different sectors, including mobility, sustainability, robotics, logistics and edtech.

The demo day offers startups the opportunity to present themselves to an audience of investors, potential customers, partners and industry players from all over Europe. “After the demo day – he explained Antonio Pisante30 years old, program manager for Italy of Techstars – the relationship with the startups does not stop, the amount of activity decreases but our support is always there”.

Techstars numbers

In Italy for 3 and a half years, Techstars immediately launched the first Smart Mobility accelerator and the first international program at the Turin OGRs. In 2022, the program expanded to become the first accelerator in Italy focused on Smart Cities, “a sort of expansion of the concept of intelligent mobility to other areas, including sustainability, smart government, education, smart companies”.

Thanks to partnerships with local companies and innovation hubs such as Torino City Lab, the participating companies had the opportunity to test their innovative solutions within the Turin area. Alumni over the past three years have raised more than $70 million in funding and created more than 400 jobs.”

Over the years, Pisante underlined, “the quality of Italian startups has changed, especially as regards the founders and the international mindset”. And speaking of the Italian framework for investments in startups, he spoke yes “of a less favorable year than 2022, but – he added – in the world of early stage investors there is a lot of movement. The problem is from Serie A onwards.”

Innovation for the city

The program also makes use of the partnership with the municipality of Turin. “This administration is very interested in solutions related to smart roads and smart driving. But other startups active in different sectors have also been chosen to collaborate: we are talking about areas such as school, animal care, culture”. A sort of social open innovation.

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The 10 startups of the demo day

Automatika Robotics is a French startup that develops driving solutions powered by Artificial Intelligence, in unstructured environments. Founded in 2022, the company provides machine learning solutions to the challenges of autonomous navigation. The founders are Maria Kabtoul and Haroon Rasheed. Specializing in robotics and control theory, Maria holds a PhD in applied mathematics and has experience working on mobile robots alongside proactive and socially conscious navigation for self-driving cars in dynamic spaces shared with pedestrians. Haroon is instead a researcher in the fields of machine learning and physics-based simulation.

Empethy is a startup founded in Naples in 2021 by Lorenza Silvestri and Annamaria Barbaro, both 27 years old. The company has developed a platform that connects associations with families who want to welcome an animal into their homes. “In 12 months – they explained – Empethy has managed to involve over 500 kennels, shelters and associations throughout Italy, to convey more than 2500 adoptions, and to forge the first collaborations with companies that want to measure and communicate their social commitment towards the promotion of responsible adoptions”.

Heloola is a startup founded in 2019 in Milan by Giada and Alice Cancellario. Born with the aim of celebrating reading as a form of entertainment, already accelerated at B4i – Bocconi for innovation, the company is in fact a book club that each selects a contemporary book and discusses it with the community on social media and through digital meetings.

pack is an Italian startup founded in 2021 in Bologna by Pietro Maria Picogna (also CEO) who deals with human resources and who has developed a platform designed to optimize the growth and enhancement of employees. Among the tools, mentoring programs to support senior figures with young talents and the definition of continuous feedback to maintain a constant flow of communication between superiors and collaborators.

tutor now is a startup, born in Como in 2021, specialized in online tutoring that has developed an innovative platform designed for teaching. The founders are Nicola De Carlo, Luca Dei Rossi, Andrei Braila and Riccardo Sciortino. Among the accessible pathways are homeschooling, the recovery of insufficiencies, the possibility of learning a new language from scratch, or being helped with homework or supported even in the case of specific learning disabilities and special educational needs. Incubated in Lomazzo, in the ComoNext technological hub, Tutornow was selected among the five startups of the “From idea to business 2020” tender of the Como Chamber of Commerce and participated in the Web marketing festival in Rimini.

Wibo is a startup active in the training sector, founded at the end of 2019 by Alessandro Busso and Tommaso Seita. Its goal is to make corporate training fun and interactive through microlearning, gamification, and meaningful encounters.

Intuitive is a Portuguese startup, founded in 2020 in the midst of the pandemic, which facilitates the creation and correction of exercises, tests and modules, designed to assist teachers and schools in virtual or face-to-face teaching. Founded by Diogo Silva, Duarte Oliveira and João Guimarães, the company has developed a collaborative platform where teachers can easily create, save, manage, share, publish and correct exercises and tests, for face-to-face, hybrid or online lessons.

Favorites is a startup born in 2023 in Lisbon that develops augmented intelligence solutions. The company, founded by Francesca Rubbiani, Shailendra Tomar and Jorge Mendes has created a platform that helps building managers save on energy costs. The company’s software connects with the smart meter and uses machine learning, climate and satellite data. It provides easy-to-implement actions to save money, reduce energy consumption, and decrease a building’s carbon footprint. Preflet’s technology detects energy signatures and leverages multidimensional data such as energy, weather, occupancy, energy audits, historical faults, and satellite data.

Sirius is a Dutch startup, based in Amsterdam and founded in 2019 by Anastasia Kuskova, Sergey Tyan, Vsevolod Martynov. It offers customized solutions to companies for decarbonization and green financing, helping to collect subsidies, save on energy costs. Thanks to the artificial intelligence engine, you can map your climate goals and achieve them effectively.

Sorair is a London-based startup that wants to make same-day deliveries cheaper and more accessible by providing companies with an autonomous delivery system via drones, for hire or with a technology license with the aim of decreasing the carbon emissions produced in the last phase of the supply chains.