A CZU student Martin Hořínek with his project FishRAS became the absolute winner of the Student Startup Battle taking place as part of the Startup World Cup & Summit international conference.
- On 17 October 2017, the Startup World Cup & Summit (SWCS) international conference took place at the Prague’s Lucerna palace. The event integrates the Startup World Cup international platform and the Startup Summit Czech conference.
The event included several sections – the Lucerna Large Hall accommodated the main programme with its Inspiration Zone with contributions by personalities in the tech world, such as Otto Fabri from Tesla Motors.
This was also the place of encounter for startups from over fifteen central and eastern European states, with the three winners from the regional round having an opportunity to sweep 200 thousand dollars on the Fundlift crowdfunding platform. The absolute winner can look forward to competing for a 1 million dollar investment in the Silicon Valley international final.
The conference also offered mentor desks with Czech and international investors and personalities of the startup world. The competing projects could rehearse their presentation in the Pitch Zone and thus receive some feedback before their final presentation. The overall event was accompanied by valuable networking giving the participants additional contact opportunities for further development of their projects.
Besides the main competition, also student projects had their encounter within the Student Startup Battle category powered by Česká spořitelna. Two startups were selected for the final to present their projects for the audience and jury directly as part of the main Inspiration Zone programme. The participating projects competed for a two-week incubator scheme in the Air Ventures accelerator consisting in development and feedback by means of a workshop and individual mentoring. These joint efforts may unfold to a full project incubation scheme involving an initial investment of 50,000 dollars.
In the Student Startup Battle category, the Czech University of Life Sciences was represented by Martin Hořínek with his FishRAS project. He became the absolute winner of the Student Startup Battle, earning an opportunity to advance his project to a successful implementation. The project is focused on fish breeding and production in an unorthodox way based on a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) – recirculation of water between tanks with minimized environmental impact while using waste as fertilizer or fuel for a biogas generation plant.