Italian Master Startup Award 2022: here are the eight finalists

There are eight start-ups who managed to make it to the Italian Master Startup Award 2022 finals, the only national prize which recognizes the actual results obtained by the young high-tech companies, within 3/5 years since their establishing, coming from the academic environment. The challenge not only offers a €10,000 money prize, jointly financed by the association PNICube and I3P, Innovative Companies Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, but it allows start-ups to have new visibility in order to get into the biggest companies’ radars.    

After 10 years since the publication of the Italian Law no. 221/2012, which officially recognized start-ups and started an organic regulatory framework sustaining new innovative companies’ growth, the Universities Incubators’ Italian Association is bringing the IMSA finalists onto the Italian Tech Week stage, within Turin’s Officine Grandi Riparazioni (OGR), using the venue to make a point about what has already been done and the upcoming challenges. The award ceremony, at its 16^th edition and organized together with I3P, will take place on September 30^th, in the early afternoon, with free entrance upon registration and live streaming.

The event will open up at 2:30 PM CEST with the introduction speeches of Alessandro Grandi, President of PNICube, and Giuseppe Scellato, President of I3P. The eight finalists’ pitches will follow, showing their full journey and future goals to a jury composed of investment funds operators, academic entrepreneurs, and company managers. The award ceremony will follow the panel “Italian start-ups’ growth paths: achievements and challenges”, hosting important guests such as: Stefano Buono, President of LIFTT and CEO of Newcleo; Claudia Pingue, CDP Venture capital SGR; Alessandro Cillario, Co-Founder of Cubbit, a start-up whose goal is becoming the most important cloud services provider worldwide; Jonata Puglia, Co-Founder of Leaf Space, which provides communication and control systems for satellites. In the end the winner will be announced, and the award ceremony will take place.    

The eight finalists

1. ABzero, innovative start-up specialized in advanced technologies for the healthcare sector, whose goal is bringing into the market an innovative, safe and efficient system able to transport life-saving medical and biological materials such as blood, blood components, organs, tissues and medicines, which are all highly perishable, using drones. The system assures delivery in a fully autonomous, immediate, and safe way for the human component even in malfunctioning phases. The carried good is safely stored in a Smart Capsule that protects its quality. A patented and unique system is able to monitor and guarantee the ideal conditions during transportation thanks to the innovative on board IoT sensors and a proprietary software. The Smart Capsule is compatible with 90% of existing drones and makes possible an 80% faster and 30% cheaper and greener delivery in relation to traditional transportation ways.
   
   
2. AIKO, the deep tech Italian start-up that develops AI solutions and softwares aimed at the space mission automation. Founded by Lorenzo Ferruglio, Giorgio Albano, and Loris Franchi, AIKO was born inside I3P, the Politecnico di Torino’s innovative companies’ incubator. It has been the first European society that has showed orbiting deep learning algorithms. Its technologies can increase the infrastructures’ automation level, enhance spatial systems’ performance, and introduce autonomy regarding decision taken during missions, allowing a great cost reduction to take place. It’s all about an AI ecosystem for future spatial mission in Earth orbit and in deep space.
   
   
3. Ermes Cyber Security, is a start-up founded by Web Security experts and AI researchers which uses its own patented algorithms and grants protection to companies, reducing the web menaces and informatic attacks exposition up to 99% as compared to the main solutions already on the market. The Ermes’s innovative technology value relies on shifting the protection paradigm from a centralized approach at the network level, to a distributed approach: the product is a B2B on-device solution that protects in real time the workers’ web browsing, reducing the menaces’ exposition time window from days to minutes. Ermes was born in I3P and it’s looked as one of the best emerging companies worldwide within the field of applied AI to hacker attacks detection. The company owns over 10 AI proprietary methodologies and it’s able to scan over 10 million websites daily.
   
   
4. Hiro Robotics, an innovative start-up from Genoa, designs, develops, and manufactures machinery for robotics application and industrial processes automation. It has a primary focus on waste treatments, developing robotics solutions which integrate technologies such as cooperative robotics, computer vision, and AI. Amongst the developed solutions, there’s a dismantling system for TV and flatscreen monitors which grants a material recovery up to 99% and a process time reduction up to 75% as compared to manual dismantling or to indiscriminate waste shredding.
   
   
5. ISAAC Antisismica, start-up born in 2018 from the homonymous project from Politecnico di Milano, and specialized in developing smart technologies for seismic protection and building and infrastructures monitoring. The company has patented “Active Mass Damper” technologies for earthquake protection; these technologies can be used for existing buildings as well, starting from an oleo-dynamic model, tested on real scale buildings. Such technology evolved in electric machinery generation, suitable for any building type. The user only needs to install the devices onto the building’s roof, in order for them to analyse the building’s structure and subsequently to protect it in complete autonomy: when a earthquake happens the devices record in real time the building’s movements and they compute, thanks to the control algorithm, the necessary amount of forces needed to reduce oscillations.
   
   
6. MgShell, medtech, spin-off of Politecnico di Milano, developed a tiny intraocular device – biodegradable and having medication programmed release – able to save the patient’s sight, threatened by age-related macular degeneration, a central retina chronic and degenerative disease. The main goal is disrupting the treatment for the most common loss of sight cause withing the Industrialized Countries, and also open up to treating other pathologies. The technology would drastically reduce costs and ease the burden on patients, caregivers, and National Healthcare System. The suggested solution is magnesium – based and grants more treatments, gradually released, without surgery, and with just one injection. The main advantages are increasing the patients’ adherence to treatment, the cost reduction for the NHS, the possibility to generate business opportunities for pharmaceutical companies.
   
   
7. Rozes, Università di Padova’s spin-off, offers the first worldwide Data Intelligence service able to spot with just one click, the similarity rate between one company’s financial statement and failed or criminal’s ones. It’s a predictive, fast, and precise instrument, which allows companies and PA to detect potential issues in real time, making risk evaluation on clients and suppliers (on competitive bidding companies, as well) faster, verifying robustness and reliability at the same time.
   
   
8. Splastica, spin-off from Università degli Studi di Roma Tor Vergata, led by the researcher Emanuela Gatto, developed an exclusive technology to produce bioplastic which is 100% biodegradable and 100% compostable from milk. The production process on industrial level is low cost and low environmental impact, unfolds through milk waste products’ processing. The patented material – SP-Milk – can quickly biodegrade at room temperature without producing dangerous wastes, and can be used to make dishes, caps, and sustainable gadgets, following all the circular economy’s principles.