On 7 July 2021, 17 students in 13 teams from all four faculties at Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences presented their ideas for innovative products or start-ups as part of the StartGlocal Academy. The concepts were as diverse as the presenters themselves.
On the one hand, ideas for food start-ups were presented, including vegan baking kits and an organic mealworm farm. There were also proposals for augmented and virtual reality applications, as well as an app for sports training. Other ideas centred on (mental) health – as a way to help people cope with the coronavirus pandemic. Nearly 50 members of the audience watched the pitches live online and voted for three all-female winning teams.
These are:
1st place: Anna-Lea Koßbu with her booking platform for sustainable hotels, ‘StayAllEco’,
2nd place: Kathrin Vasquez (Mechanical Engineering student) with her concept for ‘Crownhouse’, a workshop where old petrol cars are to be converted into hydrogen-powered cars,
3rd place: Ulrike Ito (Biological Resources student) with her idea for the start-up ‘Cheesy-O’, through which she aims to sell her own homemade vegan milk alternatives locally.
‘StayAllEco’ voted best idea
A booking platform on which hotels are rated according to their level of sustainability – that is the idea of Anna-Lea Koßbu, a fourth-semester student on the Bachelor’s degree programme in Sustainable Tourism at the Faculty of Society and Economics.
Whilst travelling after leaving school, Koßbu realised that there was no platform where she could choose hotels that prioritised sustainability. ‘StayAllEco’ aims to change that: in future, the platform will list all types of accommodation according to criteria such as locally sourced food (for example, through partnerships with local producers or manufacturers of wooden coffee capsules), energy saving (e.g. motion sensors in corridors) or hygiene (environmentally friendly alternatives for hotel linen, including laundry balls containing minerals rather than chemicals). In addition, the aim is to build a community comprising sustainable hotels, sustainable hotel service providers and hotel guests.
The student, who grew up in a village in Hesse and came to Kleve to study after travelling the world, is convinced: “During the coronavirus pandemic, when many people had to stay at home, there was a growing awareness of more eco-friendly behaviours such as reducing waste. Now that we can start thinking about travelling again, I want my platform to offer a way to live sustainably whilst travelling. In three years’ time, ‘StayAllEco’ should be firmly established in the minds of those who want to book accommodation online and for whom sustainability is a priority,” says the 24-year-old.
Thanks to the supporting organisations
The top three places are awarded prizes of 300, 200 and 100 euros respectively. The university would like to thank all StartGlocal Academy participants, the mentors and experts, and in particular the three supporting associations – Campus Cleve e.V., Campus Camp-Lintfort e.V. and the university’s supporting association – for providing the cash prizes. In addition to the prize money, the Rhein-Waal University of Applied Sciences Friends’ Association e.V. is donating a tree this year to the GlocalForest, which will be planted in the garden behind the Tropical Greenhouse on the Kleve campus.
StartGlocal – Global Spirit for Local Start-ups
The ‘StartGlocal – Global Spirit for Local Start-ups’ project has been funded since April 2020 as part of the EXIST programme by the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy and the European Social Fund. Sustainability is the project team’s top priority: for every milestone achieved in the project, a tree will be planted as part of a ‘StartGlocal Forest’. “The issue of sustainability is of great importance in our StartGlocal project. It is very important to us to establish the university as an innovation partner for sustainability issues in the region, whilst at the same time involving and supporting our students,” says Dr Gerhard Heusipp, Head of the Centre for Research, Innovation and Transfer at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences.
StartGlocal Academy
As part of the StartGlocal Academy workshop programme within the StartGlocal project, students and alumni of the university interested in starting a business were given the opportunity during the 2021 summer term to acquire the fundamental know-how required to set up a start-up.
In an interactive learning environment, the students were supported by experts and mentors from the start-up and entrepreneurship sectors. Over the course of twelve consecutive online workshops, participants were taught all the key skills and processes essential for a start-up, including idea generation, business models, prototyping and, on a practical level, company law and taxation. ‘Demo Day’ is the closing event of the StartGlocal Academy, at which all participants present their product or start-up idea to an audience, who in turn select the winners via a live vote.
The StartGlocal Academy took place for the second time in the summer term of 2021, following the first round of this programme at the end of the 2020/21 winter semester, during which twelve student teams presented their ideas and student Blanca Paschen impressed the judges with her ‘floating gardens’ concept.
The ‘StartGlocal’ project is funded by:
