Successful start into the business accelerator programme HIGH-TECH.NRW

Despite Corona and the digital kick-off, the HIGH-TECH.NRW accelerator programme successfully started its first round on 01 September 2020. The programme is the first accelerator in North Rhine-Westphalia for high-tech start-ups with a hardware-oriented business focus and a joint initiative of the state cluster NanoMikroWerkstoffePhotonik.NRW with the universities of Bochum, Dortmund, Duisburg-Essen, Münster, Cologne and Aachen. Twelve North Rhine-Westphalian start-ups from very different high-tech areas, such as photonics, additive manufacturing, space technology, sustainable energy generation and electromobility, were invited to participate in the programme.

In the first pitch session of the digital kick-off, the start-ups presented their innovative business cases in front of a top-class audience of experienced mentors, potential investors and strategic industrial partners. In the inverted pitch session that followed, the mentors and company representatives introduced themselves and gave an impressive insight into the broadband and highly specialized expert network of HIGH-TECH.NRW. Afterwards, the participants were able to exchange ideas in parallel group rooms and to initiate first cooperations aiming at supporting the start-ups in the further business development and growth process.

The kick-off event was preceded by a complex application and selection process in which representatives of the universities and the state cluster selected the final programme participants from a large number of applicants. Due to the high-quality level of the applications received, the initiators decided to include more teams than originally planned (12 instead of 10) in the programme. The participating teams are: airCode, AutoProNano, FreeD Printing, gapcharge, House of Plasma, LIDROTEC, Midel Photonics, Neutron Star Systems, Pixel Photonics, qubeto, smartGEP, and ViCut. Find out more information about the start-up teams and HIGH-TECH.NRW on the accelerator website https://high-tech.nrw.

HIGH-TECH.NRW is being organised for the first time this year and piloted as part of the Interreg Europe project NMP-REG (http://www.interregeurope.eu/NMP-REG). Official sponsors of this year's programme are the companies Evonik and KIRCHHOFF Automotive.

Cluster NMWP.NRW
Dr. Heinz Brueckelmann
Project Manager
Merowingerplatz 1
40225 Düsseldorf
Germany
Phone +49 (0) 211 38 54 59-17
Email: heinz.brueckelmann@nmwp.de
www.nmwp.nrw.de

The State Cluster NanoMicroMaterialsPhotonics.NRW (NMWP.NRW) represents and supports the North Rhine-Westphalian industrial companies, SMEs and science institutions in the areas of nanotechnology, microsystems technology, photonics and innovative materials. Its overall goal is to develop NRW to the most competitive and highest dynamic knowledge-based economic area at national and international level.

This release was published on openPR.