On the morning of August 1, our marketing manager Elena Stefanatou had the pleasure to join this year’s Jyväskylä Business Rally Investor Day in Finland, organised in collaboration with EBAN, Cefmof, FiBAN, And Startup Factory Jyväskylä.

As the event kicked off the session opened with welcoming words by the Mayor of Jyväskylä Timo Koivisto. After these opening words we were presented with our first keynote of the day from Haruka Arai, executive director of Central Finland Mobility Foundation (Cefmof). In his speech he discussed the goals of Cefmof to stop biodiversity loss, reduce the use of oil and minimise its social and environmental effects. Their multipathway approach to carbon neutrality is based on providing hydrogen solutions to the city of Jyväskylä. The idea is to scale these solutions to all of Finland and continue expanding throughout the world. As a show of their commitment to a carbon neutral society, Cefmof is offering ne nominated start-up the opportunity to join a 2-year incubation programme at the Yritystehdas, Startup Factory in Jyväskylä.

With this year’s focus on sustainability and smart technology, the event brought together eight curated international startups to pitch in front of angel investors from across the EBAN network. As the pitching competition began, the jury consisting of Haruka Arai from Cefmof, Jean-Louis Brelet from SBA and EBAN, Audra Elena Shallal from SBA and EBAN, Elina Koivumäki from FiBAN, and Jussi Heinila from FiBAN would be introduced as they would be going over each of the startups and award two winners of the event.

Meet the startups that took the pitching stage:
Remoted, Tampere Finland
Aizily., Mougins France
Cityspotting®, Jyväskylä Finland
Green Carbon, Jyväskylä Finland
ONIT Sport, Jyväskylä Finland
Soletair Power, Lappeenranta Finland
Tespack Ltd, Espoo Finland
xCura, Fukuoka Japan,

Before the winners were announced however, we were introduced to two keynote speeches. Suvi Collin, Head of Legal & ESG from Finnish Venture Capital Association Venture Capital Investments in Finland went over the role of venture capital investment in Finland. She addressed the importance of CV funding stating that over 30% of Finland’s top 500 companies were built through it. She would touch upon its impact on the Finnish economy and how it can be used as a tool to invest in sustainable developments. She would end by going over the different methods to prompt sustainable development through investing in new green innovations, developing turnaround companies, and enhancing ESG goals of all your portfolio companies.

In the second keynote, Matti Malkamäki, Founder and Chairman of the Board of Hycamite TCD Technologies Oy would go over their Company journey towards H2 investment. He described their own method of obtaining hydrogen revolving around a promising solution by using methane splitting to create low-carbon hydrogen solutions for energy consumption.

With the day winding down to an end, it was finally time to reveal the winners of this year’s Business Rally Pitching competition. As co-organisers of the event we had the unique opportunity to award one of the winning startups tickets to the European Angel Investment Summit.

Winner of the 2-year incubation programme at the Yritystehdas, Startup Factory: Remoted
Winner of the European Angel Investing Summit Tickets: Tespack Ltd

We would like to personally congratulated both of these startups and we can not wait to Tespack Ltd in Brussels on October 15 -16!