Omdena AI Incubator Accelerated 77 Social Impact Startups Across 25 Industries

We at Omdena truly believe that great startups should build solutions that positively change the world by uplifting the vulnerable, improving health, and protecting the environment. This means building products in a collaborative manner, to achieve the objective of maximizing positive impact rather than shareholder profit alone. According to UBQ, the 2021 impact investment market has grown significantly over the past few years. As businesses aim to be more socially conscious, the drive to operate profitably enterprises that serve the greater good is a focus of modern business operations.

Also in 2022, our focus at Omdena has been to support impact-driven social startups on their journey. 

Omdena’s incubator program has helped 77 social impact startups build real-world solutions, and get access to a talent pool of more than 5000 data scientists and machine learning engineers. With best-in-class data science and collaboration tools, the program recipients are well on their way to achieving their targets. 

Here are ten exceptional startups from Omdena´s incubator (from Pre-Seed to Series A) that have shown great promise (a link to the full list is at the end of the article):

Dryad (Environment, Germany)

Detecting Forest Wood Fire through Machine Learning

50 AI engineers collaborated for 8 weeks to analyze sensor data and test possible systemic data models to develop an intelligent recognition algorithm to detect fire of different types of wood.

The world’s forests are burning! If current trends continue, up to 170 million hectares could be lost until 2030 and with it, we gradually lose the earth’s great carbon sink consuming 110 billion metric tons of CO2. Are you passionate about protecting the planet’s most valuable resource and looking for an opportunity to contribute? Do you want to help mitigate the ever-growing threat of climate change?

Find out more about the project: Detecting Forest Wood Fire through Machine Learning Based IoT

Humanity (Health, UK) 

Through their mobile app, 20 000 healthy years (and counting!) have been added back to their users.

Since launching the app worldwide only 6 months ago, Humanity Inc gained 75 000 sign-ups with 50 000 actively engaged users! 40 days after signing up monitored health actions of users increased 15%. This gives 0.49 years per active user so far, validated against published and peer-reviewed scientific aging models.

Humanity’s mission is to extend the healthspan of humanity. The consumer subscription service enables users to find out what actions they can take to slow their aging process and thus reduce the risk of disease by tracking key aging biomarkers (digital and blood).

Funding via Crunchbase: Seed US$ 2.5M, 10 total investors

Find out more about the project: Predicting Biological Age Through AI

Retrolux (Energy, USA)

Retrolux provides cloud-based and mobile software that is transforming how lighting retrofit contractors, ESCOs, lighting project owners, manufacturers, and vendors, work together as a team in a single ecosystem. Our product is purpose-built for an industry that hasn’t changed much in 60 years. Designed from the ground up by lighting experts who have actually done lighting and energy-savings projects, Retrolux® is built to work simply and effectively while dealing with the specific issues faced within the lighting and controls industry. Whether it’s lead generation, energy, and cost analysis, rebates and incentives, specifying materials, project financing, project delivery, or anything in between, Retrolux is a single solution that has the potential to truly change the world.

Funding via Crunchbase: Seed US$ 100K, 1 total investor

Find out more about the project: Building a Recommendation Engine for Energy Solutions to Increase Sustainability and Energy Efficiency in Buildings

OKO Solutions (FinTech, Luxembourg/ Uganda) 

OKO provides index insurance and other farming-related services to smallholder farmers in emerging countries. Using state-of-the-art technologies to monitor rainfall and crop evolution, a direct interface with farmers and a unique distribution network, OKO protects farmers and unlocks their access to financing.

Funding via Crunchbase: Seed US$ 1.2M

Learn more on a project between Omdena and OKO by visiting the page: Using Satellite Imagery to Detect and Assess the Damage of Armyworms in Farming

RenewSenses (Health, Israel)

RenewSenses are lowering barriers for people who are blind or visually impaired by using AI and multisensory augmented reality. They have developed a discreet and friendly personal assistant for better mobility and orientation for people with sight loss.

Funding to date: $665K, from VCs, angels and grants

Find out more about the project: Helping People with Visual Impairment to Easily Use Buses through Computer Vision

WEO (Environment, Luxembourg)

WEO contributes to better environmental management using data from space and AI to help build a more sustainable future for all, keeping to the values of integrity and innovation in a challenging and fun environment.

They specialize in water resource management using Earth Observation data providing seasonal, accessible, and affordable information continuously to their clients. Their products are developed using deep learning techniques and citizen science.

Find out more about the project: Building an NLP tool to Improve Natural Disaster and Water Resource Management

Nestre (Health, USA) 

NESTRE is a Neuro-Strength Company that applies today’s science and our proprietary training methodology to help people reach their full potential in brain health, mental wellness, and human performance through neuroplasticity. It’s a customizable and non-invasive solution to some of the world’s biggest brain-based health and performance challenges. Welcome to the Science of Better! You can get better, we can help, LETS GO!

Find out more about the project: Building A Recommendation System For Cognitive Exercises and Training Programs

Sleepiz (Health, Switzerland)

Sleepiz AG (Ltd.) is a Zürich based startup with a mission to provide patient-centric disease management through seamless integration of contactless monitoring into people’s homes. Sleepiz leverages the power of sleep insights with a device that is simply placed next to the bed. The device operates in a non-contact fashion and measures movements originating from heart contractions and breathing patterns, as well as body motions with medical-grade accuracy. While currently focusing on respiratory illnesses, Sleepiz aims to improve people’s lives by creating the future of healthcare. 

Funding via Crunchbase: Series A US$ 4.8M

Find out more about the project: Developing an AI Algorithm for Sleep Pose Estimation to Improve Sleep Apnea Condition

BrainPoolTech (Agriculture, Singapore)

BPTs turn large physical environments and create comprehensive digitally alive models of unprecedented insight to empower sustainability and to prepare, mitigate, and respond to disasters. Their intuitive platform as a service promotes sustainability of large spaces in a post-pandemic world. Their technology integrates digital twin 3D maps, real-time tracking, environmental sensors, and artificial intelligence. 

Find out more about the project: Drone Data and Environmental Sensor Read-out to Automate Plant Health Prediction and Drought Control

NeedEnergy (Energy, Zimbabwe)

800 million people do not have access to electricity, with 600 million+ of those residing in Sub-Saharan Africa. NeedEnergy is an energy-tech start-up that is leveraging modern data science techniques to encourage the uptake of solar PV systems and clean energy in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. NeedEnergy through its memeza.ai platform pulls, scrapes, requests, and collects data from across the IoT devices like gas smart meters and electricity smart meters/monitors to profile the energy needs of the distribution grid. We train our models with this data to create opportunities at which we deploy renewable energy generation assets to cater to this need. After deployment, our platform monitors and manages these assets so as to guarantee the power and performance of the installed assets.

Funding via Crunchbase: Angel

Find out more about the project: AI for Solar Energy Adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa

Envisionit Deep AI (Health, South Africa)

Envisionit Deep AI™ is an African innovative medical technology company using Artificial Intelligence to transform medical imaging diagnosis. Trained and validated by radiologists for medical practitioners, their products detect and highlight abnormalities across X-rays, ultrasound, MRI, and CT scans.

Funding via Crunchbase: Pre-seed US$ 324.9K

Find out more about the project: Detecting Pathologies Through Computer Vision in Ultrasound

Qualify as a Social Impact Driven Tech Startup?

Join our AI Incubator for 2022 (booked out till February)