Start-ups Leroma and Voltfang win Meet, Greet + Beat final in Düsseldorf

The last stage of the roadshow "Meet, Greet + Beat", took place on 13 September with the grand finale in Düsseldorf. At the closing event in the state capital, the jury awarded two first places: Leroma GmbH from Düsseldorf and Voltfang from Aachen both received the prize of 5,000 euros.

Mona Neubaur, Minister for Economic Affairs, Industry, Climate Protection and Energy: "With our roadshow series, we offer young start-ups the opportunity to present their business ideas to a larger audience and thus get investors excited about them. They take advantage of this opportunity: I find it impressive that so many people with clever concepts are willing to take responsibility and help shape the future of North Rhine-Westphalia. We need these innovative and sustainable founders to advance the economy and climate protection together."

Eckhard Forst, Chairman of the Managing Board of NRW.BANK: "North Rhine-Westphalia needs courageous founders who enrich the digital and sustainable transformation of North Rhine-Westphalia with their impulses. The 'Meet, Greet + Beat' roadshow showed the diversity of ideas that young companies use to shape change. And it offered the start-ups a stage to make precisely these ideas better known and visible."

The following start-ups presented their companies:

• Winner of the Roadshow Wuppertal – LEROMA GmbH, Düsseldorf (Marina Billinger): The company's goal is to recycle food raw materials. For this reason, LEROMA has developed the surplus exchange, where leftover stock and residual materials are resold. 
• Winner of the Roadshow Münster – SALES2B Dostert Lohaus Wegge GmbH, Münster (Florian Dostert, Malte Lohaus, Bastian Wegge): Through the combined analysis of customer needs and sales data, the software uses artificial intelligence to identify the customers of tomorrow.
• Winner of the Roadshow Dortmund – SeedMe, Bochum (Natascha Heinrich, Luisa Leinweber): The start-up sells seed-stable, i.e. traditional and natural organic seeds for flowers, vegetables and herbs. SeedMe thus offers a sustainable alternative to the predominantly offered hybrid seeds.
• Winner of the Roadshow Aachen – Voltfang, Aachen (Roman Alberti, Afshin Doostdar, David Oudsandji): Voltfang is an environmentally friendly and affordable electricity storage system made from processed electric car batteries. The founders have set themselves the goal of making electromobility greener. They recycle used batteries and produce electricity storage at the same time to drive the energy transition.
• Winner of the Paderborn Roadshow – Recommendy, Bielefeld (Berkan Cinar, Sinan Kuscu, Julian Meyer, Melvin Schwarz): The start-up has developed a platform for online retail. Recommendy equips online shops with AI technologies to automate manual work steps.
• Winner of the Roadshow Cologne – YONA Group GmbH, Hürth (Aaron von Lüpke, Urs Pospischil, Mel Richter): The software start-up has developed an app with which they extend the analogue world with digital elements – such as a video in a print magazine or a 3D animation on a flyer – using an AR-supported software solution.

In addition to the pitch competition, there was an exciting supporting programme with thematic impulses and networking offers for people interested in founding, founders and founding scholarship equally!

Event information at a glance

Date: September 13 2022

Time: 5.15 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Location: Halle am Wasserturm, Areal Böhler

Hansaallee 321, 40549 Düsseldorf

Winning team from Wuppertal: LEROMA GmbH

Founder: Marina Billinger

Branch: Food industry/Internet

Company headquarters: Düsseldorf

Start-up summary: LEROMA's business idea is the targeted recycling of food raw materials at the beginning of the value chain. Until now, surplus raw materials have been converted into energy, recycled or disposed of. Only a small percentage is sent for reuse. For this reason, LEROMA has developed the Surplus Exchange, where surplus/remainder/residual materials are resold instead of being disposed of. The surplus exchange is an innovative solution to actively counteract food waste. It is unique in its form, as it does not yet exist in this form, and neighboring industries such as the pharmaceutical, pet food, cosmetics or cleaning industries benefit from LEROMA.

Further information: leroma.de

Winning team from Münster: SYNTINELS

Founding team: Malte Lohaus, Bastian Wegge, Florian Dostert

Branch: Information technology – Cloud

Company headquarters: Münster

Start-up summary: Timing in B2B SaaS sales is everything – with SYNTINELS your SDRs address exactly the customers who need your software and thus realize +20% more meetings today. SYNTINELS analyzes your sales history, identifies your individual success drivers and prioritizes your prospects with the right timing.

By focusing on your ICP, SYNTINELS enables your SDRs to

    your SDRs to exceed their quotas
    increase your pipeline
    Evaluate new customers for the right timing to contact you

Further information: www.syntinels.com

Winning team from Dortmund: SeedMe

Founding Team: Natascha Heinrich, Luisa Leinweber

Branch: (Online) commerce

Company Headquarters: Bochum

Start-up summary: SeedMe sells seed-safe organic seeds, with the mission to give gardening a new look and offer a safe alternative to the hybrid seeds that are predominantly offered. With our focus on quality, sustainability, unique design and an all-around carefree package, we inspire amateur gardeners as well as gardening novices and people looking for the perfect gift. We take our customer:inside at the hand and clarify: The alleged green thumb or a garden is not needed!

Further information: www.seed-me.de

Winning team from Aachen: Voltfang

Founding team: Roman Alberti, Afshin Doostdar, David Oudsandji

Branch: Energy storage

Company headquarters: Aachen

Start-up Summary: Voltfang is an environmentally friendly and affordable electricity storage system made from processed electric car batteries. Through innovative technologies, Voltfang aims to offer society the opportunity to make the use of lithium-ion batteries more sustainable. Voltfang does this in two ways: First, Voltfang is making electromobility greener by offering used EV batteries a meaningful reuse and avoiding new production of traction batteries. On the other hand, Voltfang produces electricity storage systems, which are indispensable for the energy turnaround and which advance the energy turnaround by decentralizing the electricity market.

Further information: voltfang.de

Winning team from Paderborn: Recommendy

Founding team: Melvin Schwarz, Julian Meyer, Sinan Kuscu, Berkan Cinar

Branch: Software as a Service (AI, B2B)

Company headquarters: Bielefeld

Start-up summary: Anyone who can use artificial intelligence for their own benefit automatically has a major competitive advantage. Unfortunately, this technology requires a lot of data and enormous expertise that is not available in most companies. This leads to companies like Amazon dominating eCommerce. We're changing that, equipping both small and large online stores with next-generation AI technologies so they can keep up with the giants. By using our AI technologies, online retailers can save many manual steps and generate up to 10% more revenue through autonomous product selection optimizations.

Further information: recommendy.io

Winning team from Cologne: YONA Group GmbH

Founding team: Urs Pospischil, Mel Richter, Aaron von Lüpke

Branch: App and software development

Company headquarters: Hürth

Start-up summary: With the vision of enabling customers from all industries to share information in an innovative way, the founding team developed the AR app YONA. Just as diverse as the possibilities created by AR are the projects they manage. The team puts videos in print magazines, adds an image gallery to a business card or a 3D animation to a simple flyer. On tourist tours, attractions are underlaid with games or historical backgrounds are explained. YONA also makes it possible to show buildings that have long been destroyed in their old place in their original size. For customers in the manufacturing industry, an AR-supported guided tour through the machinery helps their employees to learn the ropes.

Further information: yona.app

Connections, contacts or a lucky coincidence – the right network and direct access to funding and consulting opportunities are the be-all and end-all for a successful start-up. Our partners in Düsseldorf.