The Norrsken Foundation is a non-profit organization that supports entrepreneurs in solving the world’s greatest global challenges such as poverty, hunger, mental health, pollution, and climate change. It has established multiple venture capital funds, manages an accelerator program, and operates co-working spaces. Norrsken was founded by Niklas Adalberth, one of the founders of the fintech company Klarna. With Norrsken Impact/100, the foundation recognizes the most promising impact startups in the world every year.
This year, a large portion of them – 42 companies – come from the United States. German startups take second place, with a total of 15 on the list, three of them from Munich. Third place goes to the United Kingdom with 10 startups. With startups from India, Kenya, Nigeria, Argentina, and Indonesia, the list also underscores its global reach. Notably, only one startup from China made the list.
The Munich startups among Norrsken Impact/100
Tozero develops a scalable recycling facility for lithium-ion batteries. It aims to recover not only lithium but also other valuable materials such as nickel, cobalt, and graphite from discarded batteries. Tozero was founded in July 2022 by Sarah Fleischer and Ksenija Milicevic Neumann. In their work, the two founders work closely with Prof. Bernd Friedrich, who is considered a pioneer in battery recycling research as head of the Institute for Metallurgical Process Technology and Metal Recycling at RWTH Aachen. Tozero recently inaugurated a pilot facility for battery recycling, and the startup completed its last funding round in September 2022. At that time, 3.5 million euros were raised.
Planet A Foods was founded in 2021 by Sara and Maximilian Marquart. The siblings develop new food products that they can produce independently of severely limited resources such as cocoa, palm oil, or land. The startup initially focused on producing cocoa-free chocolate and developed Nocoa. This cocoa substitute is made from oats that are first broken down by yeast (fermented) and then roasted. In this way, the product develops typical chocolate aromas and also has the texture of chocolate. Planet A Foods already operates its first production facility in the Czech city of Pilsen, which produces up to 750 kilograms of cocoa-free chocolate mass per hour. Munich Startup was already able to taste an ice cream based on Nocoa. The startup has been funded with a total of around 5.6 million euros, which it raised in two seed funding rounds.
Battery recycling, new food products, and optimized wind power
Kitekraft, founded in 2019 from the Technical University of Munich, develops flying wind turbines. The technology consists of a multicopter drone with wings that is connected to a ground station by a cable. This solution enables wind energy generation using less material than conventional wind turbines, which reduces costs, lowers logistical effort, and is also less visually intrusive. Kitekraft’s first products are 100kW systems for farmers, municipalities, islands, and microgrids. Kitekraft plans to scale these up to 500kW and later to multi-MW systems for grid-level power generation. In December 2022, Kitekraft secured 1.5 million euros (1.6 million dollars) for further development.
