The Nordic and Baltic startup scene really rocked it in 2015, ArcticStartup writes. Which Estonian startups does it reccommend to follow in 2016?
Guaana is a platform for open innovation, where scientists, pioneers, visionaries and change-makers can build open communities around their research and vision. The goal of the platform is to enable technology transfer through crowdsourcing.
Guaana connects scientists around the world, and also enables gathering information through “Open Collaboration Challenges”. This means basically anyone can launch a challenge on the platform, and use the power of collective intelligence to solve the toughest scientific problems.
“Average cost of an Open Innovation project is approximately €43,000 right now if you want to post an ideation to any existing services”, describes Marko Russiver, the co-founder of Guaana, and says that the cost is completely unrealistic for recently founded startups. On the other hand, even innovation divisions of major corporations don’t always succeed to create most innovative solutions though they would have the money.
While Guaana has been talking with CERN, NASA, Google and top scientists around the world, we’ll see if the year 2016 will be the year of demonstrating that there’s no borders in science.
Velmenni: Forget Wi-Fi – Here comes Li-Fi? Estonia-based Velmenni is building a new wireless technology for high-speed data transmission. Their product Jugnu is a next generation smart LED bulb, that can transfer data through visible light with up-to 1GBps speed. This Li-Fi communication system uses light as a medium of transport instead of traditional radio frequencies. In comparison to radio waves, the use of light in order to transmit data may be limited but there’s huge opportunities for the technology.
Despite of the name with Finnish or Estonian vibe, Velmenni has Indian roots. The co-founders, Deepak Solanki and Saurabh Garg, moved to the Baltics to join the Estonian hardware accelerator Buildit in 2014. The company also has an office in Delhi, and before Jugnu they’ve already have had products for home automation, vehicle tracking and traffic light down-counting.
Velmenni made it to top four in this year’s Slush 100 pitching competition, where they announced that they have started trialling the technology within offices and industrial environments in Tallinn.
