DemoDay Pitch Batch #2

17 students in 13 teams from all four faculties of Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences presented their ideas for innovative products or business start-ups.

The concepts were as diverse as the presenters themselves: On the one hand, ideas for food start-ups were presented, including vegan baking boxes or an organic mealworm farm. But also proposals for augmented and virtual reality applications or an app for sports training were represented. Other ideas focused on (mental) health - as an impulse in relation to individual coping with the Corona pandemic.

Nearly 50 viewers followed the pitches digitally live and voted for three exclusively female winning teams.

These are:

1st place: Anna-Lea Koßbu (Sustainable Tourism) with her booking platform for sustainable hotels 'StayAllEco'.

2nd place: Kathrin Vasquez (Mechanical Engineering student) with her concept for 'Crownhouse', a workshop where old gasoline-powered cars are converted into hydrogen-powered cars.

3rd place: Ulrike Ito (Biological Resources student) with her idea for the start-up 'CheesyO', with which she wants to sell self-produced vegan milk alternatives regionally.

StayAllEco voted best idea:

A booking platform where hotels are rated according to their level of sustainability is the idea of Anna-Lea Koßbu, a 4th semester student in the Bachelor of Sustainable Tourism program at the Faculty of Society and Economics.

During her travels after graduating from high school, Koßbu noticed that there was no platform where she could choose hotels where sustainable aspects are taken into account.

That is what 'StayAllEco' aims to change: In the future, accommodations of all kinds will be listed on the platform according to features such as regional food (for example, by working with regional producers or manufacturers of coffee capsules made of wood), energy conservation (e.g., motion detectors in hallways) or hygiene (environmentally friendly alternatives for the hotel laundry, including laundry balls with minerals instead of chemicals) are listed. In addition, a community of sustainable hotels, sustainable hotel service providers and hotel guests.

The student, who grew up in a village in Hesse and came to Kleve to study after her trip around the world, is convinced: "In the Corona pandemic, in which many had to stay at home, an ecological awareness for more ecological behavior, such as waste avoidance, has emerged. Now that we can think about traveling again, I would like to use my platform to offer a way to live sustainability while traveling. In three years StayAllEco' will be firmly anchored in the minds of people who want to book accommodation online and who care about sustainability," says the 24-year-old.

Thanks to sponsoring associations

The first three places are awarded with 300, 200 and 100 euros. The university would like to thank all StartGlocal Academy participants, the mentors and experts, and in particular the three sponsoring associations - Campus Cleve e.V., Campus Camp-Lintfort e.V., and the Association for the Promotion of the University - for providing the cash prizes. In addition to the prize money the Förderverein Hochschule Rhein-Waal e.V. donates this year a tree for the GlocalForest, which will be planted in the garden behind the tropical greenhouse on the campus in Kleve.