Each year, young digital companies from the founding initiatives of the Federal Ministry for Economics and Climate Action (BMWK) can apply for the award “Digital startup of the year.” In addition to the founder competition – Digital innovations, funding programs such as EXIST, High-tech founder fund, Invest, Digital Hub Initiative and the German Accelerator are also part of it. One of the other participation requirements: the founders must have generated a minimum turnover of €100,000 in the past twelve months.
With this award, the BMWK honors companies that have implemented their digital founding ideas particularly successfully in a short time and are pursuing promising plans for further growth. In addition to three awards of €100,000 granted by a jury, a public award of €10,000 is also given, in which the audience selects the startup with the best video contribution in an online vote.
“Innovation begins with the courage to want to do things differently”
The public award ceremony took place this year on October 7 as part of the days of digital technologies 2024 in Berlin. Franziska Brantner, parliamentary state secretary at the Federal Minister for Economics and Climate Action, presented the awards and said:
“Innovation begins with the courage to want to do things differently, and the determination to want to do them better. Today we celebrate not only the digital solutions that our award winners have developed, but also the courage and determination that have brought them and their ideas so far and will take them even further.”
Two Munich startups can also be counted among this year’s award winners: Pina Earth secured first place, endowed with €50,000, and Certivity came in second place and receives €30,000 for it. Third place goes to Elona Health from Düsseldorf and Logistikbude from Dortmund. The Dortmund company also secured the public award.
About the Munich winning startups
Pina Earth develops certified climate protection projects with the goal of making forests in Germany climate-resilient. The forest conversion projects of the Munich startup store additional CO2 by making forests biodiverse and climate-resilient against increasing heat, storms and drought. Using AI-based technology, Pina Earth quantifies CO2 sequestration performance and enables companies to invest in high-quality climate protection projects.
Certivity aims to digitalize, simplify and accelerate the verification of regulations in automotive development with its platform. For this, the startup’s solution can be integrated into the development process to seamlessly connect the legal and regulatory world with the technical area. In this way, the startup wants to enable smarter, safer, more transparent, more efficient and more cost-effective management of regulatory requirements.
