Estonian sTARTUp Pitching 2023 announces the winners

sTARTUp Day 2023 has announced this year’s winners. EstBAN awarded a syndicate of €200,000 to Paul-Tech, Baltic Sandbox Ventures gave out a €125,000 investment to Gearbox Biosciences, and .Cocoon Ventures a €100,000 syndicate investment to MX Labs.

• sTARTUp Day 2023 is a three-day business festival with an educational program consisting of various topics – from mental health to space tech, founder stories to aviation, and deeptech to the creative economy. sTARTUp Day 2023 enables startups to show themselves in front of over 3900 attendees from all over the world: potential investors, clients, partners, and international media.
• The first winner is Tallinn-based startup Paul-Tech which offers a solution for monitoring fields’ soil-water condition. Its probes and web application help to save time by making better decisions based on the live data. The EstBAN-led syndicate investment will power the company’s expansion to the UK and Swedish markets. 
• The second €125,000 investment from Baltic Sandbox Ventures went to Tartu-based biotech startup Gearbox Biosciences, which provides an antibiotic-free and growth-decoupled protein production technology. Its Switcher Technology is based on the induced removal of the origin of replication from a bacterial chromosome.
• .Cocoon Ventures, Dubai-based VC firm, which focuses on early-stage Information Technology and Internet of Things (IoT) software companies, led a €100,000 syndicate investment for Estonian deeptech MX Labs. The startup provides camera-based technology that allows to measure a person’s heart rate with a smartphone or computer camera, potentially helping the medical community to diagnose both physical and mental health issues.