Innovation Labs celebrated a decade of activity in the service of the Romanian entrepreneurship and innovation. The event took place on Monday at the Bucharest National Opera, bringing together representatives of tech startups, of the nine main partners of the program, investors and friends of the innovation ecosystem.

The Innovation Labs Gala was an opportunity to show gratitude to the program’s partners and their pride in the performances and successes of the participants, validated over these years in front of an audience of more than 500 spectators.

Winners of the Innovation Labs Gala

The program’s main partners were congratulated for their pledge to advancing innovation and 11 successful startups out of the total of more than 60 in the program received trophies for their excellence in innovation.

uRADMonitor received the “Excellence in Innovation Award” from Orange CEO Mrs Liudmila Climoc. Mr Radu Motisan took the trophy for uRADMonitor and used the moment to congratulate the program for reaching its first decade, metaphorically calling it “Innovation society” because it reached a point where its exposure reaches the entire society, way beyond the university lab where it started.

uRADMonitor’s partnership with Orange goes back to 2016

• In 2016, our “model A3” was being created, soon to be deployed with Orange in the city of Cluj-Napoca, but this time on buses, making this a Global First: first IOT sensors for #airquality installed on public transportation, mapping with just a few sensors an entire city! For us nothing could be more exciting that getting a chance to have an entire city as a testbed at our fingertips. The “model A3” evolved into a complex product, soon to be our bestseller product.

• Cluj-Napoca was just one of the many cities we would equip with sensors in partnership with Orange. They covered all the costs, allowing us to focus on developing better IOT sensor technology

• 2016 was the year we got along with LoRaWAN . Orange excelled in making this IOT tech available very early and we were among the first to take advantage of it, a very good window of opportunity. It was awesome to have our sensors talk over more than 15km, sending in #airquality measurements from the remotest areas. Our LoRaWAN enabled devices brought us considerable sales and greatly contributed to the development of our company because it was so good.

• Back then we enrolled in Innovation Labs 2016 and by the end of the competition we were standing as one of the Winners. We also got the special prize from Orange CTO at the time, Stefan Slavnicu on the Innovation Labs 2016 main stage.

• By the end of 2016, Alba Iulia – the first Romanian Smart City was taking all the headlines in press due to huge investments of tech companies in providing an infusion of the latest digital products and services in this city. With Orange we deployed multiple LoRaWAN enabled sensors and best of all were part of the entire concept, being quoted in press several times for the years to come, a tremendous exposure for our company along with many established names of the industry.

• With Orange we participated to countless national and international fairs. Cluj Innovation Days, Digital Romania Forum Industry 4.0, Alba Iulia SmartCity conference, Smartcity Debate Iasi, two times at Viva Technology in Paris in 2018 and 2019 , workshops and more.

• Next was the Orange Fab program were we were happy to be accepted. It allowed us to expand our joint projects even further, deploying more sensors or testing new technologies (LTE-M, Liveobjects).

The density of all the support provided by Orange to our startup alone, is astonishing. And we are just one of the many in their programs. As said on the stage, we are grateful for having your partnership and trust!

Innovation Labs in figures

More than 1300 teams enrolled in national hackathons in the ten years of the Innovation Labs program. 520 startups have been mentored to push their development and finally 188 of them have made it to Demo Day , the Annual Grand Finale. 61 of these teams cumulate today a value of around 200 million euros (or $207 mil).

Special Artistic moments complemented the evening

The Bucharest National Opera Orchestra prepared two very special moments that induced vibrations to an already highly emotional evening.

Daniel Jinga conducted two performances themed to fit the Innovation Labs spirit. The participants enjoyed scenes from retro games that slowly evolved towards the modern tech we know today, demonstrating a piece of the innovation we got to live ourselves.

Congratulations Innovations Labs for the outstanding work you did in supporting development of new and innovative companies and thank you to all your partners that supported you along the way to make this dream come true!

For us it was an exciting journey and we are honoured to have been part of your story.