Arcadis has revealed the names of the ten global start-ups, including two from the UK, that have been selected for the second wave of its City of 2030 accelerator, powered by Techstars. This is year two of the programme, which is aimed at identifying and developing innovative start-ups to transform the natural and built environment.
The start-ups are focused on developing ideas around urban planning, resiliency, sustainability, new mobility, and logistic services. They include UK-based Propfolio, a digital marketplace connecting real estate assets with capital markets and visualisation tools, founded by former JLL planning and development experts Peter Bird and Tom Cartlidge, and former investment banker Angus Abbott; as well as Crea.vision, which is a computer platform featuring long range passive facial recognition and real-time localisation data.The core technology and products of all ten start-ups complement Arcadis' existing business and strategic vision. The companies will work with Arcadis during a three-month accelerator programme in Amsterdam, and take part in a Demo Day to showcase their ideas on May 28. The companies will get support from industry mentors to develop strategies to swiftly grow their business, fine-tune products and business development efforts, build relevant networks, and explore scalable opportunities for collaboration both within Arcadis and amongst its clients. Arcadis and Techstars will invest in the ten selected companies, each receiving a 3% equity stake.
The first year of the programme has supported many start-ups who are successfully raising capital for growth and working closely with Arcadis businesses and their clients worldwide on pilots and commercial agreements. This includes UK-based Mela Works, which progressed through the 2019 programme and specialises in digital tools to empower field workers and engineers to collaborate and share real-time information to improve project efficiency and delivery.
The theme of the accelerator - “City of 2030” - relates to the strategic vision developed by Arcadis and is based on the fact that in the next decade the vast majority of people will live their lives in cities.
As Nilesh Parmar, UK Chief Innovation Officer at Arcadis, explained: “The breadth of our cross-sector knowledge, from masterplanning and housing delivery through to transport, new mobility and environmental expertise, means that Arcadis is perfectly positioned to play a role in shaping future cities. The challenges facing urban communities today mean that we increasingly need to find new and sometimes unconventional solutions to the problems of population growth and climate change. All of these start-ups bring cutting edge ideas that will innovate the way in which we can help communities and their leaders create better, more liveable places, improve climate resiliency and plan for the future.”
Victor Mudretsov, founder and CEO of Crea.vision, added: “With the ever-increasing pace of technological change and huge variety of social and environmental challenges facing us today, creative approaches to problem solving and co-creation between start-ups and large corporations is essential. As such, I’m excited to be joining the City of 2030 programmeme and work with Techstars and Arcadis to develop innovative solutions to improve urban living. With our expertise in computer vision, combined with the networking power of Techstars and Arcadis’s market-leading insight, we hope to expand our offering with exceptional and trustworthy solutions for urban planning, creating products that will help to enhance efficiency, safety and quality of life in future cities.”
The 10 innovative start-ups selected for this year’s accelerator programme are:
• Niricson (Canada): Predictive asset management for infrastructure, enabled by a combination of robotics and computer vision technology
• ISeeChange (United States): Mobilizing communities to provide valuable insight and micro-data about climate impacts
• crea.vision (UK & Canada): Long range computer vision platform featuring passive detailed recognition, mobility and localization data
• Yellowbox (Australia): Smart lockers application for logistics and new mobility solutions
• Data for Good (Netherlands): Online overarching generic sustainability standard that is created to support organizations and cities in making themselves and the world more sustainable
• Agilicity (Slovenia): Parametric urban design software with interactive 3D zoning
• Downtown.AI (Canada): Machine learning and big location data to analyze, map and predict human movements in cities
• Geofluxus (Netherlands): Solid waste visualization and analytics platform
• Propfolio (UK): Marketplace for real estate, digital securities, and assets
• Cobalt Water Global (United States): AI and modeling for sustainable urban water management
