The 2021 METHA Europe Competition and Smart City Competition winners announced

, , ,

Institut Mines-Télécom (IMT) supports innovation and entrepreneurship with its network of incubators in its eight graduate schools. IMT promotes projects that are directly related to the dynamics of the city or sustainable smart buildings. Each year, it organizes the METHA Europe competition, run by IMT Lille Douai, which promotes projects at different stages of development. This year, for the first time, IMT also organized the Smart City competition during the Ever Monaco exhibition, recognizing the best presentation of a start-up by its manager.

Organized by IMT Lille Douai and supported by Institut Mines-Télécom, METHA Europe is a competition for innovative projects related to the following themes: Smart Building, Smart City, Sustainable City. The METHA Europe competition is aimed at different innovators depending on the stage of their project through three categories. Raoul Viora, Mc2d Advisor and Secretary of the Monegasque National Committee – World Energy Council chaired the jury.

Winners of the METHA EUROPE 2021 competition

  • “Student” category

SWAP (Grenoble School of Management incubator) is a solidarity-based rental platform that allows users to rent their equipment to each other by posting ads that are visible in their local environment. The objective of this platform is to help associations to access a wide range of goods at fair prices and to simplify the process of exchanging equipment in order to avoid the unnecessary purchase of equipment used on an occasional basis only.

It was competing with Bot, an intelligent ecosystem that optimizes travel (Mines Saint-Étienne incubator) and Cycloïde, which develops 3D technology for buildings (IMT Lille Douai incubator).

  • “Ante-creation” category

The “Ante-creation” category is intended to reward an innovative idea or concept.

Aureax (Inria incubator) wants to create a navigation device for cyclists. This involves equipping cyclists with a navigation bracelet based on haptic technologies that simulate their sense of touch in order to guide them safely.

The competitors in this category were: SMART 4IoT for the remote diagnosis and debugging of IoT devices as well as Usav for the creation of an innovative transportation system (Mines Saint-Étienne incubator).

  • “Start-up” category

This category is aimed at companies in the fields concerned by the competition that are less than 2 years old and are looking for seed capital.

Optikan (IMS Bordeaux) offers solutions for non-destructive quality control of manufactured parts in various industrial sectors thanks to the use of terahertz waves.

Also in the running were Tagether, an application to build the shopping experience of tomorrow, and L’Atelier Organique, which designs autonomous, self-supporting plant turrets

The competition awards €5,000 in prizes.

Winners of the IMT Smart City Award

The SmartCity/SmartBuilding/Sustainable City Startup Village organized by Institut Mines-Telecom in partnership with the MonacoTech incubator and SBLM Ventures, selected 31 startups. 29 of them took part in the pitch competition before a jury chaired by Patrick Duvaut, Director of Innovation at Institut Mines-Télécom. The competition was open to all exhibiting start-ups.

  • The first IMT Smart City prize of €3,000 went to Unéole (formerly incubated at IMT Lille Douai). This start-up proposes a mixed solar/wind energy platform adapted to flat roof buildings.
  • The second Smart City prize of €2,000 was awarded to ThorLight (IMT Lille Douai incubator), which is developing cutting-edge technologies for river transport of goods.

The Jury also awarded two “Coup de Coeur” (judges’ favorite) prizes, which were donated by SBLM Ventures and Estimeo. The first “Coup de Coeur” is equivalent to two awards of €1,500 each and the second to two awards of €750 each.

eLichens won the first prize. This start-up offers air quality measurement and analysis solutions for the BtoB segment.

The Jury awarded its second prize to TripBike (IMT Lille Douai incubator). This start-up has developed a range of electrically assisted Hyboo bikes made of ultra-light bamboo.

Télécharger le communiqué de presse