Klin’s co-founder Antoine Hron was the winner of this year’s Creative Young Entrepreneur Luxembourg (CYEL) competition.
His company offers dry-cleaning and laundry services on demand, picking up garments from the clients’ home or from their place of work and returning them once they have been cleaned.
It uses environmentally friendly washing machines and dry-cleaning without chemicals. After 6 months of operation, the young firm is already considering expanding its team.
Environmental concerns
The second prize was given to Rebecca Maroko and Chloé Schneider who also have environmental concerns as their main focus: OUNI offers an environmentally friendly alternative to conventional supermarkets where clients can shop while avoiding package waster.
The third prize winners, Samuel Beauvois ans Bertrand Deroanne from Assurbox, have developed an application whose first module allow car sellers to interact with any insurance company in Luxembourg in a simple and standardised way.
The jury’s special prize was awarded to the team behind Food4All, a young start-up aiming to decrease the food waste of supermarkets.
Establishing Luxembourg as an international start-up hub
The CYEL competition has rewarded entrepreneurs aged between 18 and 40 for more than a decade. Run by JCI Luxemburg, the initiative aims to support young business leaders as a means to promote creativity and entrepreneurship.
Luxinnovation has been one of the partners since the very beginning, and this year its CEO, Sasha Baillie, was invited to give a keynote speech at the award ceremony.
Ms Baillie spoke about the strong growth of the start-up ecosystem that Luxembourg has experienced over the past years. “From including a few support organisations and two public incubators, it has grown into an extensive network of specialists providing advice and support, incubators, accelerators, pitching competitions and so on, many of which are based on public-private partnerships,” she said. “This development has taken place to respond to the needs of the growing start-up community, but it is also an expression of Luxembourg’s ambition to establish itself as an internationally recognised start-up hub.”
Luxinnovation provides a range of services to start-ups and runs the accelerator programme Fit 4 Start. “However, meeting the needs of Luxembourg’s start-up community is not something that we can do on our own,” Mr Baillie emphasised. “We strongly rely on the extended start-up ecosystem: personal relationships with others that is one of Luxembourg’s “trade marks”.”
Luxinnovation contributes to the economic development of Luxembourg by fostering innovation, fuelling international growth and attracting foreign direct investment and is supported by: Ministry of the Economy, Ministry for Higher Education and Research, Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, Luxembourg Chamber of Skilled Crafts and FEDIL – The Voice of Luxembourg’s Industry.
Photos: Anthony Dehez / Paperjam
