Three Riga start-ups win 75 000 euros for their ideas

The money is given as part of the annual "Atspēriens" competition

Yesterday, 23 July, Riga City Council announced the winners of the "Atspēriens" competition which gathers proposals for technological innovations. The three start-ups each took 25 000 euros as a reward for their forward-thinking ideas.

The grant program seeks to encourage tech innovation

The three winners will be able to use the funds to facilitate the placement of their ideas on the market and making them fully realized products. The winning projects were as follows:

• “Aptolux” – this company offers portable LED light panels which are an important tool for photographers and videographers on the go. These panels are shaped as trapezoids, they are compact and can easily fit in a backpack, allowing the user free mobility. They are also wireless and can be quickly assembled in various shapes giving out a wide range of luminosity.
• “ROBOEATZ” – this start-up has decided to tackle the fast food industry with the introduction of robots that can quickly cook and serve hot meals. One custom meal will be made per minute, and the inventors are hoping to soon open the first fast food establishment where machines will serve customers.
• “BIMSynch” – BIM stands for Building Information Modeling, and this company is dedicated to improving architectural and engineering visualization by means of augmented reality. This allows professionals working in those fields to easily sport errors and deficiencies in the design stage, which would save costs and improve quality during implementation.

“2020. The year has started with the global crisis, but not for the grant program “Atspēriens”, where the number of applications has doubled in 2020, thus Riga also had the opportunity to receive twice as many creative and valuable project idea applications. The grants in the amount of 25,000 EUR will serve both the interests of the start-ups and the interests of all Rigans, ” said Artis Lapiņš, Deputy Head of the Riga City Municipality Interim Administration.

“Atspēriens” began as a municipal program back in 2009 and has been organized as a competition since last year. The idea has been to show encouragement to the innovative minds of Latvia, and support for the small businesses of the future. Ever since its inception almost 10% of the participants have received some form of financial support.