The tenth and last city pitch before the grand finale of the #believeinyourself challenge is over. The last place for the main event in Vienna was awarded in Klagenfurt on Wednesday. Five startups from the Green Mobility & Sustainability category have pitched for entry into the final of Austria’s largest startup competition from Erste Bank and Sparkasse, the start-up service of the Chamber of Commerce and Trending Topics. And the final winner of the city pitches is: Bike Gorillaz.
Bike Gorillaz from Vienna offer customers e-bikes for a monthly subscription price. The bikes are individually adapted, the young company offers trekking e-bikes, mountain e-bikes and children’s e-bikes. The insurance included in the price also covers all damage not caused intentionally as well as theft (without excess).
Victory for Bike Gorillaz “great feeling”
“It’s a great feeling to have won here. The confirmation from a jury that has a lot of experience in our field is also particularly important. We hope to be as far ahead as possible from the finale, even though we of course know that there will be extremely good startups there,” said Arjun Ahluwalia, founder and CEO of Bike Gorillaz, on the victory at the City Pitch in Klagenfurt.
Bike Gorillaz will now pitch for the title “Startup of the Year” at the final of the #believeinyourself Challenge on May 24th. The other startups in the final are REEDuce, Worm Systems, Shopstory, Goldblatt, Holloid, Oktav, mySproggy, Radish and Biomotion Technologies. Bike Gorillaz were able to assert themselves in Carinthia against the competitors Repark, EOOS NEXT, Imhotep.Industries and Circle One (all information about the startups that competed here).
“Fantastic projects” at the event
In view of the outstanding pitches, the jury in Klagenfurt again had a difficult task in choosing the winner. Even if Bike Gorillaz won in the end, the jurors emphasized that all five start-up companies show great potential. “We have seen fantastic projects that will certainly go their way in the future,” said jury spokesman Florian Gschwandtner, co-founder of Runtastic. In addition to Gschwandtner, the jury also included Alexander Windbichler, CEO and founder of Anexia, Kerstin Prutej, team leader for business customers – Lower Carinthia at the Kärntner Sparkasse, Florian Kornek-Goritschnig, start-up representative at the WKO and Lena Wostal, Head of IoT Marketing at Magenta .
As usual, there was also a keynote on Wednesday in Klagenfurt. Michal Lagan, Head of IoT Sales at Magenta Telekom, held it and spoke about the disruptive power of innovations, a power that all participants clearly demonstrated with their pitches. Before the pitches, Florian Gschwandtner also spoke on the topics of founding, leadership and disruption.
In addition to the ticket for the final of the #believeinyourself challenge, Bike Gorillaz received prize money of 1,000 euros from Erste Bank and Sparkasse as well as 2 annual licenses for wîse up, the digital training and further education platform of the Austrian Chambers of Commerce. wîse up offers more than 15,000 innovative learning content in the form of videos, interactive formats, texts and webinars that are suitable for EPU, startups, SMEs and corporates.
All further information on the #believeinyourself Challenge 2023 can be found here.
The pictures of the pitch:
All photos © Kärntner Sparkasse/Hannes Krainz
