The Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the place where you meet everyone in the business of Mobile, in IoT and increasingly also other businesses that see the need to be part of the digital infrastructure transformation. Ten startups from EIT Digital Business Communities were represented in the IoT Pavilion.
Closing deals and setting up new collaborations in 2016.
Agneta Jacobson, Business Community Leader, and Henrik Abramowicz, Future Networking Solutions Action Line Leader, had pre-arranged almost twenty meetings with partners and key stakeholders, e.g. Ericsson, BT, Tele2, TeliaSonera, ETSI and Media Markt.
They came to the booth and had very intensive but effective introductions to each of the startups. "We help our companies identify new opportunities but it is up to the startups to follow up on leads and hopefully close some of the business opportunities" explains Agneta Jacobson.
Our business communities offer access to market and access to finance. When the startups have had a chance to promote and prove themselves in their local market and they are ready to scale up and expand, EIT Digital can help them develop in an international market.
The best opportunity to network around "Networking" in the whole year, worldwide.
"We come here to connect our startups with senior business VPs and we were able to get a special visit to the restricted Ericsson hall and present the products and services by our startups. Being at the Mobile World Congress is a fantastic opportunity for us because we meet all the big players that are active in Networking - this is the biggest event for the whole year, worldwide", says Henrik Abramowicz.
Meeting key stakeholders, potential customers and collaboration partners.
The president of the Industrial Internet Consortium, Bill Hoffman, had an exclusive dinner meeting with EIT Digital and was excited to get to know the business community, led by Agneta Jacobson, Business Community Leader.
"I am delighted to meet with the EIT Digital people and an amazing group of startups. We are looking forward to some successes from them in the future."
Bill Hoffmann took a great interest also in the ACTIVE project on IoT (see related article) and agreed to follow up on this with the Future Networking Solutions Action Line Leader Henrik Abramowicz.
Another visitor to the EIT Digital booth, ETSI CSO, Jörgen Friis, was presented to the project and underlined the potential that ACTIVE has for standardization - a matter to be pursued in 2016.
The booth in the IoT pavilion attracted interest from other industry representatives such as Chris Bruce, Director BT Global Services and Co-Chair of the Wireless Broadband Alliance:
"I have had some really, really interesting meetings with the EIT Digital companies doing some innovative stuff for the Internet of Things. I think for a lot of corporate clients and telco’s there are some useful innovation here which should be useful to tap into."
Clear offer from EIT Digital - we know what we get as a startup in the business community
The startups - Light Flex Technologies, Neue Labs, Onegini, Waylay, Sensefinity, Shopjoy, Shortcut Labs, Ubiqu (Qkey) and Tanker - compiled a broad range of products and services of interest to the growing IoT market, such as simplifying the development of applications and user experience of connected devices and security.
Neue Labs, a Swedish startup that joined the business community in 2015, received a lot of interest for their product Automat that enables designers to prototype new IoT products or wearables. CEO Anders Björk shared his positive experience:
"Since we met with Agneta Jacobson, we have been pulled to customers from day one. It was clear to us what the offer of EIT Digital was and what we would get. At Mobile World Congress they have arranged a lot of meetings with partners, customers and also suppliers which is good for us as we are in a starting phase and need to build our business."
