New strategic partners for SpinLab

29th Aug 2017

As announced earlier this year, Leipzig has been chosen by the German Ministry of Economic Affairs (BMWi) as one of only 12 Digital Hubs (jointly with Dresden). National and international innovators in the sectors of energy, smart city and ehealth will come together in Leipzig to develop the future of urban infrastructures.

For several reasons, Leipzig has been chosen as Smart Infrastructure Hub. Besides the lively and vibrant startup scene here, the activities of leading established corporations and research institutes were very important. Therefore, we are more than happy to announce that some of the most important leading companies in the region decided to join the Smart Infrastructure Hub and SpinLab - The HHL Accelerator as strategic partners. Besides their generous financial support, they will actively help to support startups with their market know-how, networks and to realize pilot applications together with them.

For SpinLab energy, smart city and ehealth as well as basic technologies that can be applied in these sectors (e.g. big data, IoT, data security) will become ongoing focus industries. Therefore, we are looking forward to accelerate two startups in each sector plus two with basic technologies in the upcoming classes. Each focus will include one strategic partner leading the field. A warm applause to our new partners:

With more than 3,1 clients AOK PLUS insures nearly every second patient in Saxony and Thuringia. In this region AOK PLUS is the biggest health insurer and the seventh-biggest in Germany. The company is still growing and only in the last year AOK PLUS welcomed more than 271.000 insured clients. AOK PLUS will be our strategic partner in the field of ehealth/healthcare.

The so called Leipziger Gruppe is a group consisting of the municipal companies Stadtwerke Leipzig (electricity), Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe (mobility) and Kommunales Wasser Leipzig (water supply). The group belongs to the biggest municipal companies and Germany and one of the biggest companies in Eastern Germany. Therefore, Leipziger Gruppe is a perfect partner for our smart city focus.

The VNG Group is one of the leading European gas industry corporates with more than 20 consolidated companies in 8 countries. The VNG Group covers the whole value chain from gas exploration to end customer delivery. The VNG Group employs 1300 people with a sales volume of 7,2 billion Euros. With VNG Innovation GmbH the group actively invests in startups and ideas, making it to a interesting partner for our energy focus.

We are more than happy to welcome such a great and strong group of strategic partners. In the next weeks this network will even grow with additional so called theme partners for each of our new topics. We will publish these partners one by another. And of course, we are thankful for the ongoing support of our existing partners as well as HHL Leipzig Graduate School of Management and the City of Leipzig.