seif Awards 2017: Startups combine a positive social impact with a business model

This year, 171 social entrepreneurs from all over Europe took part in the international competition. The top-class jury selected ten finalists who presented their business model live to the 200-strong audience for 4 minutes on October 2, 2017. It is striking that among this year's finalists are many personalities who have understood a difficult life situation as a challenge for a business start-up with social added value. The total prize money of 50,000 Swiss francs was distributed among the following five winners:

• myAbility won the seif Award for Integration and Prevention, which is supported by Suva. 15% of the population in Europe have a disability. The huge potential of this target group is mostly ignored. Founder Gregor Demblin contracted paraplegia in a swimming accident in 1995. In 2014, he founded the consultancy myAbility in Vienna and developed a novel, business-oriented approach to the inclusion of people with disabilities.
• Smart Home Technology received the prize for entrepreneurial innovation launched by UBS. This young company builds on the IoT (Internet of Things) technology and offers a tool that shows the performance and efficiency of a product with a cloud solution. Based on the data analysis, small and medium-sized companies can initiate energy efficient measures and thus save CO2.
• Blitab is the name of the winner of the award for future trends, which was made possible by PwC. Blitab is the first tactile tablet for the blind that provides online data in Braille. Co-founder, Kristina Tsvetanova, had the idea when a good friend asked her to fill out an application for a course for him. Due to his visual impairment, he could not use a notebook without expensive aids. Now, thanks to Blitab, students with visual impairments can continue their education more efficiently.
• Fightthestroke has received the Digital Healthcare Award, which was presented for the first time by Johnson & Johnson. Fightthestroke's story began when little Mario, son of the founders, suffered a stroke shortly after birth. The parents grappled with the issue of young stroke patients and experienced hurdles and a lack of treatment options for children. The research resulted in, among other things, an interactive platform with a novel therapy model for the home.
• Coolar has won this year's seif Award for Social Entrepreneurship. 75% of the medicines and vaccines in countries of the South lose their effectiveness mainly due to a lack of cooling facilities because of a lack of electrical access. Julia Römer has developed a compact cooling device that can solve this problem without the need for access to electricity. Due to its great importance for health care, the device is used specifically for medicines.

Source: soap