Picture Courtesy of :agile

Through E.ON :agile, the founder’s spirit between Germany and Israel keeps growing hand in hand: the accelerator and seed investor by E.ON has for the first time brought together startups from both states in their class. Six companies with deep tech solutions in the energy sector have been given the chance to grow further and make their ideas a reality through the support of E.ON. The companies will network with E.ON units in order to implement joint pilots as well as to realize digitalized and sustainable customer and business solutions.

With being accepted into the class, the startups will be given access to the customer base and network infrastructure of E.ON. The three-month collaboration includes the building blocks of a classic accelerator program such as training and individual coaching, but also the advantages of a strategic investor.

:agile strives for a long-term cooperation – the German-Israeli exchange is set to go on after the common accelerator period.

:agile scouts are not only in Europe-wide for new business concepts, but has also focused its search on the founding nation Israel since the beginning of this year. “In Israel, companies find a distinctive startup culture and young companies with often-times excellent capital resources”, says Inga Land, CEO of :agile accelerator GmbH. “With our new German-Israeli class, we want to promote the exchange with innovative founders and, in addition to that, support companies from Israel in their market entry in Europe.”

The German-Israeli startup class by :agile:

Aaron.ai – a better customer service with Artificial Intelligence   
The customer service of the future combines Artificial Intelligence and human expertise. The solution by Aaron.ai makes this symbiosis a reality already: the startup from Berlin has developed an artificial intelligence with which employees and customers can easily control their business processes by voice – via web-version, app, voice assistant or telephone. The AI-supported call center simplifies processes in the company and improves the customers’ experience. Simple questions and concerns can be answered automatically on the telephone. This gives client advisors more time to deal with the more complex problems and inquiries. Not only E.ON, but also other companies like BVG as well as several hundred doctor’s offices in the DACH-region already rely on the intelligent customer service. The customers benefit from better accessibility, shorter waiting times and even more detailed information around the clock.

Enerthing – photovoltaic electricity for IoT devices  
Enerthing develops scalable, maintenance-free IoT-solutions that draw its energy from light. This is achieved by means of flexible surface coatings that can generate electricity via photovoltaics. The technology is optimized for artificial ambient light – weak light up from 200 to 500 Lux –, so that fields of application such as building automation sensors, asset tracking or indoor navigation are well suited. Enerthing makes it possible to generate more electricity than would be possible with ordinary batteries in the course of their lifetime of a few years. This additional energy can be used for higher performance: higher data volumes, more measurements and better data quality. The effort for maintaining and replacing the batteries is almost completely obsolete with the solution for approximately 10 years.

EnergyCortex – the digital energy manager for better overview 
The cloud-based SaaS-solution by EnergyCortex allows companies from the industrial sector to cost-efficiently and quickly keep watch on their energy expenditure. The solution automatically checks the energy-related costs as well as utility bills by energy providers and on the basis of the data collected points to potential savings opportunities. By means of an individual digital platform, users are given a visual representation of their current energy data as well as information on their ecological footprint and possible savings opportunities. Customers benefit in three ways: They save energy costs, reduce their energy expenditure and reduce the workload for their in-house energy manager.

Siraj – easy connection of Edge-devices to IIOT   
With Edge computing, an Internet-enabled device takes over part of its data processing rather than uploading all the information directly into the cloud without filtering. This process makes sure that less data needs to be processed online. The startup Siraj from Israel has developed a solution for connecting IIOT-devices from the industrial sector by means of deep learning techniques and Artificial Intelligence fast, securely and cost-effectively with every possible customer platform. By networking data and devices with IoT platforms that offer access to a large pool of tools and services for analyzing data, efficiency and productivity increase. One hurdle in networking Edge-devices and IIoT-platforms so far has been the lack of uniform standards. The solution by Siraj therefore automatically generates customer-specific gateway software supporting up until now unrecognized devices. This paves the way for companies to become part of the Industry 4.0 and a new digital revolution.

Timing – better resource planning for customer visits         
Craftspeople or field representatives cannot give a specific date or has difficulties overcoming organizational obstacles? The Israeli startup Timing has found a way to significantly shorten the waiting time for customer advisors: the software supports service companies in planning their employees’ deployment and thus ensures a better and more transparent service experience for customers. The solution allows for completely automated processes in which the actual travel time as well as maintenance time of the respective work steps performed at the customer’s site and on the road are taken into account. With a proven increase in efficiency of operational processes by 20 percent and 80 percent more customer engagement, the startup can sustainably change the interaction between customers and service providers for the better.

Tribe – giving a face to Artificial Intelligence

Humans prefer to communicate face to face. For that reason, the Berlin startup Tribe teaches machines to communicate like humans. To do that, a software creates within seconds individual 3D animations that can adapt to human emotions. One looks one another in the eyes, smiles or stays serious and reacts to the facial expressions of the other. Tribe combines 3D models of the head, generated in the shortest time possible, with the latest face and emotion recognition and therefore gives the latest generation of intelligent virtual assistants human traits. The animations are made available by means of SDK and are used, for example, in security technology, e-commerce or customer service in the form of chatbots.

About :agile (www.eon-agile.com)

As the accelerator and seed investor by E.ON, :agile is committed to promoting innovative to disruptive energy-related business models and helping them grow. Together with E.ON’s expertise and network, :agile supports European and Israeli startups in scaling their ideas successfully. The goal is to connect companies with E.ON units in order to realize joint pilots as well as to provide digitalized and sustainable customer and business solutions. The startups are given access to the E.ON customer base and network. :agile combines the building blocks of a classic accelerator program such as training and individual coaching with the advantages of a strategic investor, always with the perspective of building and maintaining long-lasting partnerships.

More Information available at:

www.eon-agile.com/