The Venture Impact Awards

9 Winners @ $15,000 each

Women on Top
Women On Top (WoT) is a non-profit organization working for the professional empowerment of women and for equality in the workplace. The organization’s vision is a world with empowered women at all stages of their lives and our mission is to achieve that by eliminating gender discrimination at work and promoting the equal participation of men and women in the economy by creating gradual change in the social and professional ecosystem that surrounds them. WoT was founded in 2018 and since then has created and monitored over 980 mentoring partnerships for the benefit of unemployed women, women who want to change their professional career, establish themselves in male-dominated professions, build their own businesses etc. WoT has also trained over 1500 unemployed, employed and self-employed women in skills camps offering childcare support upon need. Moreover, through the “WoT in Business” initiative they provide training, consulting and project management services to businesses and organizations wishing to prioritize the equal representation of women at work, by investing in the diversity and inclusivity of their talent pools as well as to the work/life balance of their employees. Finally, WoT has developed a wide research and communication platform, in order to build powerful networks around the goal of gender equality, help promote positive and strong female role models and raise awareness, among the general public as well as decision making bodies, around the obstacles that women face, even in this day and age, in their equal participation in public life.

Humane
HUMANE is the network for the empowerment of people with disabilities and consists of 2 organizations: The Humane Social Enterprise (KOINSEP) for the labor integration of people with disabilities (2016) and the non-profit Humane Empowering People (AMKE). It is an initiative of Dimitris Kontopidis, a patient with Cystic Fibrosis - 80% disability, with extensive experience in patients’ advocacy and social entrepreneurship. HUMANE's vision is to prove that people belonging to vulnerable groups have "unlimited" abilities, as long as we accept them, and to integrate them equally and participate in society. Through its activities, HUMANE scope of work is the empowerment of vulnerable groups with focus on people with disabilities and chronic diseases.

Citycrop
Citycrop’s aim is to enable everyone to grow high-quality, organic, pesticide-free, vegetables, and herbs, easy regardless of knowledge and experience. CityCrop makes it insanely easy to grow, harvest, and enjoy fresh food at home. CityCrop is a system with the usage of advanced technologies and data that automatically grows the freshest plants. We think of it as a beautiful mini fridge that stocks itself with high-quality nutritious food. The CityCrop App allows users to control the CityCrop device, which automated the process of growing plants at home with maximum convenience and none of the hassle. The CityCrop App is designed for both expert growers and first-time growers, simplifying the process of growing from seed to harvest. The user can automate the complex process of growing indoors with hydroponics by setting grow recipes for their specific plant strain. These grow recipes include nutrient dosing and concentration, pH balance, water cycling, air temperature, humidity, lighting, among other variables, which change on a weekly basis until the plant is ready for harvest. CityCrop is building a huge database with millions of sensor metrics. Using this data, we are creating multiple complex predictive models that can improve the user experience, as well as help users, grow their fruits and vegetables with ideal environments.

Lia
Lia works to preserve the ancient Hellenic olive species and EVOO (extra virgin olive oil) traditions through the support of small production farmers to produce and bottle organic extra virgin olive oils by growing flavorful, organic olives in the richest soils of Greece using the sustainable methods. The organization does this through a top-of-the-line bottling facility specialized in supporting small production farmers. Lia has also created an official Olive Oil Cultural Hub in Greece that International and Greek people can visit to learn about what makes high quality EVOO as well as taste it. Lia’s vision is that generational olive oil families can have a livable economic source while communing with the environment in a sustainable way. The Hub, located in the heart of Messinia, has its foundational library of information and practices rooted in the award-winning business of LIÁ Oil.

Inaccel
InAccel provides a unique integrated software platform that allows the easy deployment, scaling and utilization of hardware accelerators. InAccel also develops accelerators in the form of IP cores for applications like machine learning, financial applications, neurocomputing applications, video analytics, genomics and databases. InAccel's technology allows to run up to 20x faster these applications without the users modifying their original applications.

The Greek Online School
The organization’s mission is to promote the Greek language, history and culture through high quality educational and cultural online and face to face programs for children and adults using creative and innovative educational and technological services and tools. The main audience is children and adults who want to learn Greek or improve their language skills. The school services are aimed at people who are based all over the world, have a connection to Greece, are Greek expats, have a Greek background and family in Greece, visit Greece quite often for work or pleasure and Philhellenes.

EV Loader
EV Loader’s mission is to develop an interoperable app that helps charging station owners manage their stations more efficiently and mitigates charging complexity for EV owners. Their long-term objective is to act as catalysts for broader EV adoption and to make EV charging work in favor of the grid by integrating variable pricing mechanisms to incentivize smart charging. The app includes incentives for EV drivers to charge their car batteries when there is surplus production capacity from Wind and Solar by lowering the charge cost in these specific time intervals. The team’s vision is to accelerate transition to cleaner energy by deploying our interoperable EV charging solution and then build new products and form partnerships with energy utilities around that platform.

Ingredio
Ingredio mission is to empower the growing portion of people that want to live a healthy lifestyle and be more conscious about healthy nutrition and cosmetics without toxic chemicals. They aim to educate the consumers towards more informed decisions about the products they bring into their homes. The team’s vision is to create a society free of toxic chemicals and inform and educate consumers about the ingredients of the products they buy. We aim to protect human health and the environment and raise awareness towards a world free of dangerous chemicals.

AidPlex
With a mission to reduce scoliosis spinal surgeries, AidPlex developed ScolioSense. A smart wearable device for monitoring scoliosis treatment to improve the outcomes of the treatment and reduce the number of scoliosis surgeries. Scoliosis is a niche market for AidPlex.