November 8th, the innovation environment and student eco system in Trondheim witnessed a memorable occasion. The Prince Daniel Fellowship is currently travelling on a tour to learn more and explore the innovation environments in different countries. Finally, it was our turn to welcome and introduce our neighbor to Norwegian business, and showcase which possibilities exist for young entrepreneurs in Norway and specifically in Trondheim.
By Nicole Linnéa Monavari
The Prince Daniel Fellowship is an organization which consists of a partnership between the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences(IVA) and the H.K.H Prince Daniel of Sweden. The main purpose of the partnership is to inspire young people towards entrepreneurship and encourage them to consider the path to start their own business. Because of this, the fellowship were traveling to learn more about which opportunities exist for students and young entrepreneurs.
Before the event at Gruva started, the innovation hub at NTNU, the Strindens Promenade orchestra welcomed the guests with a musical performance where they among other songs played the Swedish known “Pippi Longstrump”. The event hosted by professor Roger Sørheim from the School of Entrepreneurship, introduced the guests to the history behind how NTNU has managed and achieved to develop one of the best eco systems for student innovation in Europe. Sørheim also points out how dedicated the students at NTNU are, and the importance of young entrepreneurs.
Despite an unexpected fire alarm interruption, it certainly did not stop the show! Furthermore the program featured live case pitches from three student-driven startups with roots from NTNU school of Entrepreneurship, showcasing the diversity and ingenuity of young entrepreneurs in Trondheim. Even though the interruption, the students were eager, willingly and energetic enough to pitch their brilliant ideas.
The first startup to pitch were Naya, a social impact startup offering human labeling of high-quality training data for customers developing machine learning models. Naya operates from their main office in Dehradun, India, and their main focus is helping and employing women from slum areas in India by offer them various benefits which can help them break out of poverty.
Wepost where the second startup to pitch their marketing idea which uses AI as a marketing technology to help companies better their content production. Their main purpose behind the startup is to empower B2B companies to craft compelling narratives for their different social media plattforms.
The last startup to pitch where Arctic Protein whom wants to make the salmon business more environment-friendly by delivering protein through insect production. The team behind Arctic Protein call themselves insect farmers and by producing and process larvae into protein flour, they want to decrease the salmon industry´s greenhouse gas emissions.
After the pitching, the Prince himself seemed impressed by stating that it was a fantastic event. Even though the fire alarm went off this time, it was all together an incredible day for our innovation eco system at Gruva.