The bootcamp is being held both online and on site in Frankfurt from 12 to 14 July 2021. The focus will be on sustainable innovations along the entire agribusiness value chain and is being expanded this year to include bio economy.
Workshops and one-on-one coaching sessions with experts from the fields of business, science and politics are all on the agenda. The workshop’s topics include growth strategies, teambuilding, data protection issues as well as techniques for negotiation, pitching and storytelling.
Applicants should meet the following criteria:
- The business model contains innovative problem-solving techniques for AgTech, FoodTech or agricultural bioeconomy.
- The business model is geared to providing products and services for other companies (i.e. B2B or B2B2C).
- The commercial enterprise is located in Germany.
‘Promoting startups is a core element of our innovation strategy. The creativity behind new products and services allows agribusiness to be a troubleshooter for the important economic, social and ecological challenges we face. Our bootcamp offers technology-oriented startups an excellent platform from which to expand their business expertise and network,’ said Horst Reinhardt, Chairman of the Management Board at Rentenbank.
At the end of the bootcamp, the entrepreneurs will pitch their ideas to a live audience at an official ‘Demo Day’. The best pitches will win a cash prize. Previous years’ winners include:
- Spoontainable makes edible dessert spoons from residual material from the food industry which replace disposable ones (first place in 2020).
- Corvitac developed a camera system using AI technology to count pigs, for solving the problem of doing it manually and therefore inaccurately (second place in 2020).
- Circular Carbon develops vegetable charcoal from recycled materials. They are a leading producer and supplier of biochar (third place in 2020)
- BEEsharing is an online platform to help both beekeepers and farmers to arrange pollination by bees (winner in 2019).
- Monitorfish works on real-time and early detection of fish diseases using artificial intelligence in aquaculture (winner in 2018).
Since 2018, 36 companies have taken part in the programme.
‘We gained a great deal from the Bootcamp. We networked with startups from the agricultural sector, exchanged important personal experiences with other founders and mentors and presented our products to a wide specialist audience, which would otherwise never have become aware of us,’ said Markus Huhn, Managing Director of CORAmaps and participant on 2020’s bootcamp.
About:
Rentenbank
Landwirtschaftliche Rentenbank is Germany’s development agency for agribusiness and rural areas. Under its statutory promotional mandate, Rentenbank provides loans at favourable interest rates for agriculture-related investments via other banks on a competitively neutral basis. Rentenbank provides funding for banks, savings banks, and local authorities with regard to rural areas. The appropriation of profits is also subject to the promotional mandate. The Bank is a federal public law institution whose capital stock was formed by contributions paid by the German agricultural and forestry sectors. It is subject to the German Banking Act (KWG) and is regulated by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) and the Bundesbank. The bank is one of the few triple-A rated institutions in Germany and raises funds primarily in the international capital markets. www.rentenbank.com Press Contact: Christof Altmann, Tel.: +49 (0) 69 2107393, altmann@rentenbank.de
TechQuartier
FFounded in 2016 in Frankfurt, Europe’s financial center, TechQuartier is a cross-industry innovation platform created to bring startups, corporates and up-and-coming talent together to work, meet, learn and collaborate on new technologies and digital business models. Our member-based community numbers more than 370 startups, 50 academic and corporate innovators and hundreds of potential founders. With international educational programs in technology, artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, we are teaching young minds to discover how they can shape their economic future. We are also paving the way towards a European-centric data-ecosystem, both as one of Germany’s largest innovation hubs and as a leader of the Financial Big Data Cluster. www.techquartier.com Press Contact: Marie Landenfeld, Tel: +49 (0) 69 90016050, landenfeld@techquartier.com
