17 hand-picked bioeconomy startups presented their business concepts to potential investors at VentureCon Bioeconomy. The investor conference is part of the Bavarian Bioeconomy Strategy.
Lena Thiede, Co-Founding Partner at Planet A Ventures:
We are in the midst of an economic disruption on the scale of the industrial revolution and at the speed of digital transformation. If we want to drive an economy that serves people and operates within planetary boundaries, we need to invest in the right companies. Therefore, as investors, we have a great responsibility because we influence the future of companies and industries. Our motto: Build something the planet needs.
Investors are pushing for more sustainability in business
This is also a great motivation for the startup scene in Bavaria. Here, there are numerous strong startups that want to contribute to more ecological sustainability with their business models. Now, for the first time, the investor conference in Munich brought 18 of these startups together with venture capitalists and private investors. The startups seeking capital were given the opportunity to present their business model and network with experts and potential investors interested in the bioeconomy.
The business ideas of the participating startups cover a broad spectrum. They all prove that high-tech and ecological sustainability can be thought together. For example, they are working on sustainable material alternatives, developing high-tech innovations for agriculture and certification solutions for agricultural raw materials, such as an early warning system for calf diseases or the non-invasive sex determination of chicken embryos in eggs. Other founding teams are developing business models around the recovery of valuable materials or the replacement of fossil raw materials, e.g. with renewable raw materials in chemical production or with a biological substitute fuel via the recycling of sewage sludge. Business concepts for more sustainability in the textile industry (keyword circular economy), ecologically safe ingredients in the cosmetics industry or the monitoring of biomarkers and ecosystems also showed the whole variety of Bavarian innovations in the field of bioeconomy at the investor conference. Startups with innovative, strongly growth-oriented business models from the bioeconomy sector were eligible to apply. All startups are aiming for equity financing by the end of the year.
The VentureCon Bioeconomy was organized by the startup and investor network BayStartUP on behalf of the Bavarian State Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy (StMWi). The conference is one of numerous measures within the framework of the Bavarian Bioeconomy Strategy, which the Bavarian State Government adopted on November 17, 2020.
Nearly one third of german startups is green
According to the GreenStartupMonitor 2022, the share of green startups in Germany is just under 30 %. The development and production of green technologies continues to gain in importance. This includes bioeconomy startups, innovative and growth-oriented young companies that make significant contributions to environmental sustainability beyond their commercial success. They develop ideas for novel bio-based products, such as insulating materials or packaging made from plant-based raw materials, plastics made from wood, or products made from residual material streams from the food industry. This makes them a driver of the sustainable transformation of the economy and society toward climate neutrality by 2050, as set out in the European Green Deal.
Dr Carolin Plagmann, Head of Investor Network at BayStartUP:
Sustainability is now very popular with investors. It is therefore crucial to bring investors together in a focused event with ambitious founder teams and convincing business concepts in order to promote professional exchange in this still relatively young topic.
