Are you looking for new contacts and joint projects? A new digital platform is bringing startups from all over the world together with companies from the Ruhr industrial region.
Matchmaker.Ruhr is a new digital platform that is bringing startups together with established companies from the Ruhr region. This matchmaking platform lets startups know about companies that have contracts to award or that are looking for startups as project partners. In this way, Matchmaker.Ruhr is enabling startups to gain easy access to the business ecosystem of the region. Startups can register for free, and thanks to the platform’s algorithm, will get new suggestions for potential business partners on a weekly basis.
New opportunities for startups through the transformation of the Ruhr region
“One of the strengths of the Ruhr region is the many initiatives and networks for startups and companies. With Matchmaker.Ruhr, we are now digitally linking important players in the region with each other and with the entire world for the first time,” says Rasmus C. Beck, Managing Director of Business Metropole Ruhr GmbH (BMR). “Due to the travel restrictions associated with the coronavirus pandemic, this represents the right move at the right time.”
The Ruhr region, one of the strongest industrial regions in Germany, is currently in the process of reinventing itself. Large energy, chemical, and industrial companies and successful small and medium-sized enterprises are developing strategies for embarking on a sustainable future. The potential for innovation was recently confirmed by a study conducted by the IW Consult and Rufis institutes on behalf of the Ruhr Regional Association, in which the high proportion of radical innovators and technological pioneers among the region’s companies is stressed. This structural change is also benefiting startups, which are in demand as catalysts.
Concrete access to B2B customers
So how does it work? Matchmaker.Ruhr accesses databases with information on thousands of startups worldwide, and at the same time, the initiators of the platform contribute their strong networks, ensuring that the leading companies of the Ruhr are also on board. “Startups need concrete access to B2B customers, with such access based on challenges and pilot projects whenever possible,” says Oliver Weimann, Managing Director of the ruhrHUB startup initiative. “Matchmaker.Ruhr is the digital extension of programs that have already been successfully established in the region, serving as the direct starting point for initiating business between startups and companies – not only in the era of COVID-19 restrictions.”
The matchmaking algorithm based on artificial intelligence introduces new, suitable business partners to startups each week, with push e-mail notifications going directly to their smartphones, just with digital dating sites. Using formats such as ‘requests’, ‘challenges’, or ‘speed dating’ companies can find suitable startups to implement their own innovation projects even faster, and the intelligent news feed keeps them up-to-date on relevant topics.
Register now and find partners
The platform is a free offering by BMR, ruhrHUB, the chambers of industry and commerce of the Ruhr region, and Initiativkreis Ruhr GmbH. Digital Campus Zollverein, the German-Israeli Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and the Greater China chamber of foreign trade, AHK Greater China, are also partners. The project is largely financed by the Ruhr Regional Association. Startups and established companies can register here: Matchmaker.Ruhr.
