(Finance) – All’Innovation Hub at Rome Fiumicino airport, 13 new startups landselected among the 116 companies that responded to the second “Call for Ideas” launched by ADR last December.
On the occasion of the settlement event of startups from all over the world – Aeroficial Intelligence, A&K Robotics, ArgosAI, Auxilia, Designhubz, Essential Aero, Guimu Robot, HamsaID, Matroid, ReLearn, Proteso, Wintics and ZestIOT – the Innovation Cabin Crew of Aeroporti di Roma organized 3 workshops regarding the future challenges of the three most important airport trends: passenger experience, airport security and process automation. During the day it was also possible for guests invited to the event to hold one-to-one meetings with the startups and members of the Innovation Cabin Crew.
“We celebrate the launch of the second acceleration program of Aeroporti di Roma – he said Emanuele Calà, Vice President Innovation and Quality of ADR – we have over 70 colleagues from all over the world: airports, airlines and startups representing 3 continents and over 20 nationalities, who are gathered here today to attend the presentation of the 13 projects that will be developed in the Innovation Hub at Terminal 1 of Fiumicino, together with the startups, partners and members of the Innovation Cabin Crew of Aeroporti di Roma”.
The startuppers based at the Innovation Hub in Fiumicino, il first industrial accelerator in Italy in the aviation sectorfor the next 6 months foreseen by their mandate they will have to solve the 8 challenges proposed by the second Call for Ideas which involves the search for innovative solutions for the following challenges: Predictive Maintenance, Enhance Terminal Processes, Improve Airside Operations, Passenger Experience, Community & Sustainability , Environmental Impact, Commercial Opportunities, Disruptive Solutions.
To carry out this second round of the acceleration program, Aeroporti di Roma has provided not only greater economic support, up to 105 thousand eurosbut – given a positive outcome of the projects – the possibility for startups of ctake advantage of potential commercial opportunities of up to 2 million euros and support future investment rounds thanks to the financial support of ADR Ventures, a corporate vehicle set up by ADR for the start-up of Corporate Venture Capital activities. This is the first initiative of its kind in the air transport sector in Italy and is aimed at financing the development of projects in sectors with high innovation potential. Indeed, among the main objectives of the new company are the management of investments in the capital of startups, the monitoring of companies in which investments have been planned, the identification through dedicated scouting of potential target companies, characterized by growth prospects and functional to creation of new services and solutions to build, together with Aeroporti di Roma, the airport of the future.
ADR has chosen to focus on the creation of an innovation model – both externally and internally – which is based on the diffusion of the culture of Open Innovation to facilitate the development of an ecosystem based on cooperation with large companies, groups industrialists, academic institutions and start-ups that share the same energy and digital transition objectives. To further strengthen the international network dedicated to innovation, during 2022 Aeroporti di Roma launched and promoted the “Airports For Innovation” network together with AENA, the first airport operator in the world by number of passengers. During 2023, the airports of Munich (in June 2023), Vancouver, Dallas Fort Worth, Nice and Athens joined the network. Over 500 million passengers are managed by the network and consequently involved in common innovative solutions.
A dedicated post will be published every week on the Linkedin page of Aeroporti di Roma to learn more about the individual startups of the new acceleration program in more detail: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aeroporti-di-roma/mycompany/?viewAsMember =true