The final group of 11 startup companies from the CEE region and Great Britain, selected from over 250 applicants from all over the world, has just begun scaling as part of the 4th edition of Startup Collider – the scaleup program for innovative tech enterprises operated by PwC Poland. PwC’s expert’s will over the next several months be supporting the finalists in the development of their solutions and international expansion.

The idea behind the PwC Startup Collider scaleup program is to support and promote innovative technology startups and help them develop in new markets, primarily in Central and Eastern Europe. Participation in the program provides young inventors and entrepreneurs with the opportunity to establish direct cooperation with PwC’s best experts and mentors, as well as the company’s partners and clients in the region and beyond.

“PwC Startup Collider is part of the Innovation@Poland program at PwC, which aims to create innovative consulting services using new technologies. At the end of last year, we turned to startups for the fourth time with a scaleup offer under our proprietary program. Being constantly very close to the innovation ecosystem, we are familiar with the current needs of innovators and see what solutions are presently in the most demand on the market. Our task is to help startups reach the next level and expand into new industries and new markets, with emphasis of course on Central-Eastern European markets,” tells us Jolanta Kokosińska, PwC Startup Collider Leader.

Over 250 applications

The two-month-long recruitment to the 4th edition of PwC Startup Collider ended in the second half of December 2019. It was directed to startups already at a higher stage of development, the so-called scaleups, with market-verified, scalable solutions in the form of a product or service in the areas of FinTech, Artificial Intelligence, process automation and digitization, Blockchain, Customer Experience and loyalty, e-Commerce, InsurTech, RegTech and Wellbeing of employees.

Within these two months, PwC Poland received 252 applications, mainly from Central and Eastern Europe. 119 startups from 28 countries, including the USA, Switzerland and the Caucasus, qualified to the analysis stage whereas, at the beginning of February, the shortlist only included 43 startups from 16 countries from CEE and Western Europe. During the interview stage, PwC experts and mentors chose the lucky final eleven visionary companies.

“The selection this year was extremely difficult because, we received a multitude of great applications. Now we are about to begin really intensive work that is going to last more than half a year with innovators who have very high expectations towards our program. Over the coming months, we will work together on their solutions, prepare joint offers for our clients, and look for new implementations for their solutions. I have no doubt that young entrepreneurs will quickly become reliable partners for corporations’ eyes,” adds Konrad Ozdowy, PwC Startup Collider Coordinator.

Until September 2020, innovators-entrepreneurs will meet with PwC experts and mentors, as well as PwC business clients and investors. Some meetings and mentoring sessions will be conducted remotely or in the form of video-conferences, and the program will traditionally be crowned with a dedicated the Demo Day event, during which startup founders will present their companies and solutions to investors and potential clients from the region of Central and Eastern Europe. This event will simultaneously start a new stage of cooperation in which startups and PwC will become business partners.

The final group of 11 startups offers solutions in such areas of innovation as FinTech, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, MedTech, Data Analytics, e-Commerce, SaaS or InsurTech.

List of startups selected to the 4th edition of PwC Startup Collider

Applica (Poland) – a global technology partner to some of the most prominent RPA vendors, including Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, and UiPath. Their solution, Robotic Document Processing, automates business processes that require scrutiny and comprehension of documents. Applica extracts necessary information from any unstructured or semi-structured document, regardless of wording and layout. Their technology seamlessly integrates with bots.

BankiFi Technologies (United Kingdom) enables the merge of accounting and cash management as well as possesses a full Request to Pay service allowing the bank to act as a Third Party Processor under the rules of PSD2.

Billon Digital Services (United Kingdom / Poland) – their mission is to unleash the transformational capabilities of blockchain technologies with a new system capable of delivering tangible business results within existing regulatory frameworks and institutions. They also created a new high-performance Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) system which unifies national currency transactions, documents on-chain, and identity management into a single system.

Fitqbe (Poland) offers a modern non-wage benefit for employees designed to increase their involvement in the form of a social platform. It ensures wellbeing and integrates employees using great fun and healthy competition. The tool can also be used to optimize Employer Branding and CSR activities.

LiveCall (Poland) developed a Call-Tracking service, which is used to optimize marketing budgets to achieve the highest quality of sales activities.

Marketing Engineers (Poland) – developers of a service using the Google Cloud Platform and machine learning algorithms to provide easy to implement, robust and scalable solutions that significantly increase data integration and marketing analyses to allow their clients to focus more on their strategic priorities.

Mostly AI (Austria) – their solution is the answer to one of the biggest challenges facing organizations today: balancing the need for Big Data innovation and Artificial Intelligence with the protection of privacy.

nuChapter (Poland) – creators of Lifestyle Assessment, which is a comprehensive tool for analyzing lifestyle and heart rate, which can maximize the potential of your employees. In addition to precisely identifying everyday factors that tire or relax staff, the 24-hour pulse analysis reveals how to deal with stress, improve recovery, and achieve better results.

Smabbler (Poland) offers a precise cognitive tool based on AI-powered solutions for processing unstructured text data and extended analysis.

Synerise (Poland) developed a comprehensive platform that makes use of Data Analytics and AI capabilities to help companies respond better to their clients’ needs through automation, Business Intelligence reporting, communication and personalization tools, as well as pricing policy management.

Your Pass (Czechia) offers a cloud service that allows clients to create, customize and remotely update the contents of the mobile wallet in the Pkpass and Google Pay format. It has been developed and structured as add-on to other systems such as POS, CRM, ERP, ticket sales, or can be added to any system as an interface for companies to display content and information to customers in the easiest, fastest and most economical way.
 

Jolanta Kokosińska

Konrad Ozdowy