Vienna is known as the “City of Music”, recognized for its great quality of life, and beautiful architecture, but more interesting for us today, the Austrian capital is also one of Europe’s biggest startup hubs.
After introducing you to 10 amazing Austrian startups to watch in 2021 earlier this year, today we’re taking a closer look at Vienna, which is home to around 50% of the country’s startups.
We’ve focused on exceptionally promising early-stage startups that where founded between 2018 and 2021, taking into consideration team size, funding, growth rate, innovation, and market size. Here are 10 Vienna-based startups worth following in 2021 and beyond.
inoqo provides scientific-based data on the environmental, social, and biodiversity impact of familiar grocery products. Born in 2020, they’ve raised over €2 million to develop their technology that can passively and smartly track the user’s grocery basket for informing them about the CO2 impact of their purchase and how aligned it is to their environmental priorities or social values. inoqo also recommends alternative products of lower impact and encourages them through personalized content, gamification, and community challenges to further pursue a sustainable lifestyle.
Founded in 2018, hi.health offers people private health insurance with convenient and safe access to health care billing via app or web. Users can easily submit their invoices digitally and hi.health takes care of the further processing, billing, and customer service providing a seamless user experience. With the integrated “library” users receive a transparent overview of relevant digital health products and services that are covered by their insurance. hi.health operates at the intersection of digital health, fintech, and insurtech.
VitreaLab is a research and development startup focusing on innovative photonic solutions for the lighting and display sector. VitreaLab uses a unique micro-fabrication technology that creates millions of tiny light channels in glass, allowing control of the flow of light in an incredibly precise way. This means the laser light arrives with pinpoint accuracy at its destined point and is ready for emission towards the viewer. Founded in2018, they’ve raised a seven-figure amount of funding. By using glass-based waveguides VitreaLab envisions revolutionary energy-efficient products.
Helu.io offers modern financial analyzes and maximum data security. Helu gives customers easy access to their accounting data (like DATEV data). Founded last year, the startup has raised over €4.2 million to reduce customers’ reporting time by 40% by automating access to accounting. Helu automatically creates a BWA and balance sheet, which clients can personalize as they wish. All reports are updated automatically with each new booking record. Businesses can build their cost center evaluation easily. Helu also offers a simple drill-down on the individual booking level, KPI calculation, and more.
Born in 2019, Pixofarm is a mobile application that helps fruit producers to get the most out of their orchards by providing reliable yield monitoring and forecast data. With these data, they can increase their production and efficiently plan and optimize their operational activities like logistics, packaging, warehousing, sales, and marketing. All they need to do is take pictures of a certain number of apples and trees with their smartphones. Pixofarm uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, and image processing technology to accurately measure and count fruits and calculate forecasts.
enspired is an AI-driven trading house that offers groundbreaking energy trading services on short-term power markets. They provide energy trading as a service based on data, self-learning models, and cutting-edge technology. Born in 2020, enspired aims to drive the energy transition by enabling clients to bring flexible assets to European power spot markets and capture their full value. They focus on supporting companies without intraday market access to commercially optimise their power portfolio’s flexibility, direct market access combined with the most progressive power trading services.
Founded in 2019, AVISIO is an easy-to-use cloud solution for hotels that digitizes the entire procurement and inventory management, enables price transparency through real-time price comparisons, and facilitates process optimization using artificial intelligence. Businesses can manage all their purchasing and inventory in one place, and manage the cost of goods sold holistically and discover new savings potentials thanks to purchasing recommendations and real-time price comparisons with AVISIO. Managers can also determine which employees can perform which actions with roles and permissions.
HeartBeat.bio is developing a high-throughput 3D screening platform for heart failure and cardiomyopathies. Founded earlier this year, the medtech startup has raised €1.5 million. Their core technology is based on self-organizing cardiac organoids (Cardioids) which resemble the physiology of a human heart chamber in a way that allows for the cost-efficient and large-scale in-vitro analysis of crucial clinical parameters associated with various cardiac diseases. HeartBeat.bio aims to change the current cardiovascular drug discovery paradigm through its Cardioid-based screening platform.
zerolens is a virtual photo studio as a web and mobile app. Their software allows creatives, companies, and brands to easily do photo shootings for their marketing, without the need for real photographers. zerolens developed a straightforward drag-and-drop 3D photo studio to design, layout, and export professional product photos. Founded in 2019, the startup has raised €235K to help customers improve e-commerce, enhance social media and run A/B tests, and create art. Users can pick from a library of fully customizable 3D templates to get started instantly, select the image size, and export photos without the need for post-editing.
Revo Foods offers seafood made of plants. Since its founding last year, the food-tech startup has raised €1.5 million and developed a new technology based on 3D Food Printing that recreates the texture and appearance of seafood. In the 3D Printing process, natural and healthy ingredients such as pea proteins, algae extracts, and dietary fibers are combined for excellent nutritional value and taste, giving the products a realistic look. Revo’s process is optimized to avoid food waste in the production process and retain more of those healthy vitamins and omega 3 oils.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!