Carbon Harvesters and Cano-ela each win a personalized training day at the EIT Food Pre-Incubation Bootcamp

15.07.2020 12:19, Isabelle Mitchell

Seventeen startups, led by 20 entrepreneurs from 13 countries, participated in the Global Food Venture Program Pre-Incubation Bootcamp. The five-day online event provided early-stage entrepreneurs with the knowledge and skills to validate their startup ideas and create a viable business. Two startups, Carbon Harvesters and Cano-ela, won a personalized training day with the Venturelab team on the EPF Lausanne campus and industrial visits in the area. 

The Global Food Venture Programme (GFVP) Pre-Incubation Bootcamp from EIT Food, Europe’s leading food innovation initiative, aims to make the food system more sustainable, healthy, and trustworthy. The partnership with Venturelab and the EPFL’s Integrative Food and Nutrition Center offers European-based foodtech startups five days of hands-on business training.

The 20 early-stage entrepreneurs learned how to validate their startup ideas and gain the essential skills needed to create a viable business. The workshops, presentations, and expert sessions provided a great opportunity to network with peers, potential business partners, and industry experts from world-renowned companies such as Kellogg's, Ricola, and Migros. The up-and-coming entrepreneurs were also inspired by Swiss foodtech founders, including MyBacs, KITRO, Opaline, and GnuBiotics.

The bootcamp concluded with a jury session in which Hilda N. Liswani (EPFL), Lukxmi Balathasan (EIT Food), and Jordi Montserrat (Venturelab) chose two winners, who won a personalized training day with the Venturelab team on the EPF Lausanne campus and industrial visits in the area: 

• Luis Alejandro Vergara, founder of Carbon Harvesters (University College Dublin, Ireland), develops a framework that measures, reports, and verifies the sustainability practices in farms.
• Maria Juliana Romero-Guzman, founder of Cano-ela (Wageningen University, The Netherlands), develops natural emulsion-based food products with a clean label and low impact on the environment. 

Luis Alejandro Vergara (Carbon Harvesters) and Maria Juliana Romero-Guzman (Cano-ela)