NOBALIS Demo Day
NOBALIS Demo Day marked the end of the first edition of the NOBALIS Entrepreneurship and Innovation Capacity Development (EICD) Programme on December 15, 2022. The Demo Day was the grand finale for 8 participating student and staff teams to pitch their food and biotech ideas, which they had worked on throughout the 3 months of the programme led by the Baltic Innovation Agency.
The first place went to team Unwasted from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, which came up with an innovative way to use coffee grounds for growing mushrooms. Team KESE from the Estonian University of Life Sciences came second with the idea of canola protein bars. Team PowerFeed from the Latvian University of Life Sciences and Technology, developing protein powder from Spanish slugs, won third place in the pitching competition.
BIA awarded team Unwasted a 500 EUR voucher for the victory to further develop the business idea, while the best teams from Estonia and Latvia received tickets to sTARTUp Day from their higher educational institutions. As the best team from Sweden, team Unwasted also won a 5000 SEK travel grant from SLU Future Food. And team OlaAlga, working on algae-based eating utensils, received tickets to the Tech Tour from NMBU and 6 hours of mentoring from Ard Innovation.
NOBALIS is supported by EIT Food and funded by the European Union. NOBALIS partners are the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (coordinator), the Latvian University of Life Sciences and Technology, the Estonian University of Life Sciences, Linnaeus University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the Baltic Innovation Agency, and Ard Innovation. The project aims to boost institutional innovation capacity in higher education.
