From among 150 applicants, ESA BIC Bavaria incubatees Katharina Kreitz of Vectoflow and Manuela Rasthofer of TerraLoupe were chosen for the Hypovereinsbank (HVB) Gründerinnen Mentoring, a support programme specifically for female founders. Key criteria for the expert jury’s selection of the winners comprise the quality of the business-plan and the founding principle.
The mentoring programme lasts six months, including personal meetings with the mentors and the HVB founding specialists which provide support with practical tips, background knowledge and long-standing expertise. As two of the six mentoring winners, the ESA BIC Bavaria incubatees are able to join top-class events of the HVB Gründerinnen Mentoring cooperation partners – amongst others the renowned DLD conference in Munich.
The mentors are experienced entrepreneurs and successful managers themselves. It is the mentoring programme’s objective to empower women to fight for their ideas and enforce them in the respective market. For the coming six months, Katharina Kreitz’s mentor will be Stephanie Czerny – co-founder of the DLD Conference and Managing Director of DLD Media GmbH/Hubert Burda Media – and Manuela Rasthofer – will be mentored by Dr Christine Frfr. von Münchhausen – independent business consultant and business mediator. The HVB mentoring programme is an initiative of Hypovereinsbank Frauenbeirat.
TerraLoupe GmbH
TerraLoupe is about unlocking detailed insights and boundless analytics in precise geo-imagery to offer solutions for real, industry-specific needs. The startup provides you with high-resolution airborne image acquisition and object recognition for geo-specific 3D information. Their capabilities cover 3D virtual-reality solutions based on remote-sensing imagery of large areas with centimetre-level accuracy.
TerraLoupe’s intelligent algorithms classify image content using techniques adapted to the customer’s needs. Basically, it acquires geo-images, writes code, and trains object-recognition algorithms to find the small pieces of relevance in big data. By combining high-resolution geo-data with image analytics, the company can supply its customers with internal views and valuable reports.
Vectoflow GmbH
Vectoflow customers want to increase the efficiency of their products by understanding fluid (e.g. air, liquids) flow parameters like velocity, pressure, and angle of attack. Among others, the company seeks to serve the energy (wind power, power generation), aerospace (unmanned aerial vehicles, turbo machinery), transportation, and performance sport markets. Its customised multi-hole probes and systems determine the needed quantities of the parameters at hand.
The probes are easily adaptable to customers’ requirements in terms of their geometry, size, and material due to Vectoflow’s innovative fabrication method (3D printing). This approach also significantly increases the robustness of the probes, making them usable in adverse environments.
Vectoflow’s vision is to help the measurement technology provided by multi-hole probes advance from the R&D segment into serial-production applications.
ESA Business Incubation Centre Bavaria
TerraLoupe is incubated at the ESA BIC Bavaria from June 2015 to May 2017 and Vectoflow is part of the ESA BIC Bavaria incubation programme from December 2015 to November 2017. The ESA BIC Bavaria seeks entrepreneurs using space technologies in a non-space environment. That does not mean rocket science, but applies to multiple application fields such as navigation and positioning, communications techniques, Earth observation, materials, processes, signals or robotics.
ESA’s Business Incubation Centre Bavaria was launched in 2009 and is ever since managed by Anwendungszentrum GmbH Oberpfaffenhofen (AZO). ESA BIC Bavaria and its renowned partners – DLR, Airbus Defense and Space, Fraunhofer IIS and Wirtschaftsförderungsgesellschaft Berchtesgadener Land – provide startups with financial and technical support at four branch offices: Oberpfaffenhofen, Ottobrunn, Nürnberg and Berchtesgadener Land.
ESA BIC Bavaria has four selection rounds each year. The next application deadline for the incubation programme is 29 August 2016. Apply now for ESA BIC Bavaria
