CEMS Students Won VŠE Startup Title with SunAware Project

Once a semester, the Department of Entrepreneurship of the Faculty of Business Administration and xPORT VŠE announce the Startup VŠE competition. Start-up companies compete for a scholarship of CZK 40,000 to support innovative business. Seven teams from all over the Prague University of Economics and Business entered the finals in the winter semester, which took place on December 14, 2021. The title was awarded to the SunAware project which focuses on the negative effects of UV radiation on children’s skin.

Their first product is a cap that alerts parents in the event of excessive skin exposure. The basis of the solution is a smart fabric, which changes its colour according to the amount of UV radiation and thus warns parents. The SunAware team wants to gradually expand its product offering with additional smart fabrics.

“Nowadays, many parents are concerned about the negative impacts of UV exposure on their children. But how much UV exposure is too much and how can we measure it..? We wanted to find a solution for this problem and came up with the first UV detecting hat for children. Using a smart textile solution, our hat indicates the level of UV exposure via a color-changing strip. This way, parents are notified and can take appropriate action to protect their child from UV damage,” explained Marsela Bebic, a winning team member. “As a team, we aspire to become a smart textile company that provides customer-centric solutions through innovative smart textiles. This will go beyond clothing for children and UV detection and will cover a broad range of customer needs and use cases,” she added.

The five-member jury included representatives of academia and the investing community. The investors on the jury were Vladimíra Josefiová from the Reflex Capital venture fund, who also acts as the CFO of the Spaceti startup, Zuzana Ondrejová from J&T Ventures and Matěj Zabadal from V-Sharp Ventures. The academic sphere was represented by the head of the Department of Entrepreneurship and the Vice-Dean for Science and Research of the Faculty of Business Administration, Martin Lukeš. The business accelerator xPORT VŠE was represented by Jakub Stránský, an experienced mentor and founder of the Techambition startup.

The teams had to give an online presentation in the “startup pitch” format and lead a subsequent discussion with the jury, which was interested in the size of the problem solved by the startup, the team’s ability to bring the product to market and the potential for dynamic growth.

The SunAware team took the first place in the competition, followed by the TalentSeed team in second place and City Adventure in third. All three teams were composed of CEMS VSE students.