Displaying items by tag: Mannheim StartUp

In spring semester 2022 Natalia Nazarko and Camille Bensallam joined Directra. for their Inside-The-Venture-Project as part of the MAN 633 course.

In delivering a market analysis for the company the team first focused on target groups and potential customers. To verify and specify the target group they performed various interviews on the target group. As a result various opportunities and threats for Directra. were identified. The second focus of the team lay on sales and market potential analysis. Therefore, the pricing model of similar foreign platforms were taken into account and learnings for Directra. were listed. All this led to the development of a potential pricing model.

Directra. is a startup that wants to connect so called project competences with project seekers. It is a multisided business that aims to connect professionals who want to work on specific projects through a platform.

In spring semester 2022 Patrick Hanley, Diego Garau and Minh Ngoc Le joined Operating Room Companion for their Inside-The-Venture-Project as part of the MAN 633 course.

The objective of their project was to provide assistance to Operating Room Companion (ORC) by developing an action plan for the company. Therefore, they performed a thorough analysis of the business environment in the medical technology device industry to enhance the company’s overview of the current size and the barriers ORC faces in the German market and the international medical device market as a whole. The healthcare industry is transforming, and VR/AR technologies are heavily involved in the transformation. In doing so they discovered a major barrier for entry for startups in the industry, this is due to factors such as legal preconditions and initial funding difficulties, both of which present major challenges. To break this barrier they analyzed several business models and finally identified a suitable one for OR Companion.

OR Companion is a project group for Clinical Health Technologies that stems from the Fraunhofer Institute for Manufacturing and Automation. The core of research and development activities of ORC aims at minimizing the complicacies that surgeons and their support personnel, such as nurses and medical technical assistants, encounter in the operating room, by applying robotic assistance systems and digital twins.

As part of the Entrepreneurial Spirit lecture MAN 633 of the University of Mannheim during the spring-summer-semester 2022, the student team consisting of Christel Ashdjian, Céline Choukair, and Kathrin Schmidt conducted their project with the start-up Visual Abstract (VA).

VA's goal for this student project was to develop a VA product suitable for trending social media platforms. This involved further development in terms of content and visual design, as well as addressing various sensitive aspects such as diversity, liability and pricing. To achieve those goals, the team determined and achieved four successive milestones together with VA which they tackled during this project: (1) Target group analysis as preparation for Instagram pilot study (2) Channel-Research & Layout-Testing through Instagram pilot-study (3) Development of a pricing strategy and derivation of implications for the business model (4) Identification of cultural & legal issues and derivation of implications for future products

Visual Abstract is a young start-up company based in Mannheim, Germany, founded by Dr. Benito Campos, Saribek Karapetyan and Gurav Sinha with the vision to make research more efficient by transforming textual abstracts of publications into visual abstracts. To date, these abstracts can be purchased through the startup's website.

To learn more about Visual Abstract see https://www.visual-abstract.com/

While participating in MAN 633 during spring semester Carla Reyes and Sabine Thouvenin supported the Mannheim based startup MyScribe.
As part of a substantial market analysis the team first looked for potential competitors in the market. Many of them exist abroad, especially in the US, but it was more of a
challenge to find the European and more precisely German ones. To compare MyScribe to its competitors, they used simple analysis (ex: comparing different features and their implications) and also other theoretical tools (SWOT, Pestel 5 forces, Kiviat Diagram...). Later they also took over responsibility for drawing the main components of a business plan. One key finding was that MyScribe should charge its services as a SaaS: with installation fees,
monthly payments, and optional modules.

MyScribe is a SaaS solution that straddles the Patient Management System and Electronic Medical Record markets, by providing medical structures with efficient software to generate, modify and synthesize medical charts.

To learn more about MyScribe see https://www.myscribe.de/

During their MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course in spring 2022 David Hecking, Pol Puig and Rebekka Rasi joined Mentalport.

In their project with Mentalport they worked on developing a gamification concept, with the ultimate goal of increasing app usage time and user retention. Gamification can help in achieving that goal, by making the overall user experience more fun and engaging and by implementing mechanisms that make the user more likely to return. Major tasks included market research on best practices regarding gamification in mobile apps, taking into account Happify and Duolingo. The findings from this analysis were then to be evaluated and applied to the Mentalport mobile app. Another milestone was the development of a user story concept and designing a gamification concept.

Mentalport is a Mannheim based startup that wants to ensure the availability of psychological help below the therapy level. Especially, students who can not go to professional help with their psychological problems are left alone. This is mainly due to time, costs and stigmatization as well as the fact that the severity of the problem is often too low to make clinical treatment available.

To learn more about the company see https://mentalport.health/

As part of the MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course in spring 2022 Kacper Szostakow and Homayoun Rasoulian joined Fleming.

The main objective of this work was to develop a marketing plan for the company. Since Fleming intends to target both B2B and B2C customers, they first separated B2B customers into two distinct groups: young entrepreneurs, who are in the process of opening their first office, and business owners who are already the owner of one or more offices and wants to expand the business. The B2C customer is a younger type that is currently finishing the medical studies or is currently working in the health sector and plays with the thought of opening his/her own doctor‘s office in the future. With that said, marketing channels were selected, with a strong focus on digital channels as the most effective ones. Following, they discussed pricing and positioning of the firm and came to the conclusion that Fleming should be positioned on the higher tier spectrum of pricing. This lead to the draft of two marketing campaigns during their ITV project.

Fleming is a Berlin based start-up, focusing on loan underwriting to the health practicioners wanting to open their practices. The company also plans and already partly offers bank account and credit card solutions.

To learn more about the company see https://fleming.de/

As part of the MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course in spring 2022 Tasawar Ahmad and Andres Avila Bruch joined Biogenom.

The major aspects of their work were market analysis and distribution analysis. Through the market analysis, it was determined that the industry sector is very competitive and that the quality of products is key to stand out and set BioGenom apart from other companies. As a result of the distribution analysis it was found that there are numerous ways to reach the consumer. Therefore, the most important implication was that the focus should initially be on the online store and demand must be increased. To increase demand, it was determined that the cheapest and most efficient marketing alternative is Instagram. To enhance outreach on this platform, a precise strategy and remarkable designs were developed to ensure sustainable and continuous marketing.

BioGenom is a company from Mannheim which is specialized in bee venom. Through a research process, the company has developed a method to extract components of bee venom in pure form, and the goal is to bring different health-promoting products to the market, pass on these components for research purposes, and establish a research laboratory for Melittin purification and testing.

To learn more about the company see https://biogenom.de/

As part of the MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course in spring 2022 Nicolas Maier, Youri Alexander Wurring and Yusuf Cagri Yapici joined Infu-Safe!

The first aspect of their work was to identify a country with a suitable problem/solution fit for Infu-Safe!’s market entry. Criteria in the initial phase revolved mainly around the countries' macroeconomic, infrastructural, and healthcare capabilities. Afterwards, they considered factors such as medical device regulations, intellectual property protection or government support more closely. Next steps were to adjust these criteria and focus on the Southeast Asian market. After a careful review of the 10 Southeast Asian countries, they concluded that Indonesia was an excellent fit for the establishment of Infu-Safe! mainly due to its market size and promising market conditions. So in the second half of the project, they provided Infu-Safe! with an in-depth analysis of the Indonesian market, including a recommendation on why Java was the region to prefer for market entry as well as potential challenges.

Infu-Safe! is a start-up company that manufactures low-cost gravity-based infusion pumps and aims to sell its product in underdeveloped markets that lack basic medical equipment. Prior to the initiation of the project, Infu-Safe! had already developed a working prototype but lacked a business plan and operational structure. Infu-Safe! is part of Frauenhofer-IPA.

To learn more about the company see https://www.fraunhofer.de/de/schnelleinstieg/alumni/news/Fraunhofer-Alumni-Award/Infu-Safe.html

As part of the MAN 633 Entrepreneurial Spirit course Nils Kühni joined Himalaya. The main purpose of his work for Himalaya was to find a way how HIMA could get better involved in the hydrogen market. In order to do that, he elaborated on four approaches: hydrogen transport in pressure tanks, hydrogen filling stations, hydrogenious and LOHC, and the hydrogen lead projects. In addition he collected the contacts of the most relevant partner companies and recommend getting in touch with them as soon as possible.

Himalaya is the innovation lab of the company HIMA, which is the world's leading specialist for safety-related automation solutions. HIMA is also a provider of hydrogen technology and currently seeks to enter the hydrogen business for diversification.

To learn more about HIMA and Himalaya see https://www.hima.com/en

In the frame of the course MAN 633 Theresa Schmid and Leo Robin worked in collaboration with the start-up die DOSE to help them on a marketing project.

The aim was to identify food retailers to cooperate with the launch of their pilot, to identify food manufacturers to offer their solution to, and to define the marketing message to address different stakeholders. So they analysed food retailers all over Germany and selected certain candidates to approach for the pilot of their project. They also analysed food manufacturers with a similar approach. Finally they conducted a research to identify marketing and sales arguments to promote the concept to food retailers.

DieDOSE offers a food packaging as part of a “reusable-as-a-service” model.