TUM Entrepreneurship Day brings together Munich ecosystem

Presidential Award goes to energy start-up

The Reverion team has developed a gas-fired power station with numerous advantages as compared to earlier plants: It is more efficient, can sequester CO2 and, in addition to generating electric power, can use surplus power.

Reverion currently focuses on highly efficient biogas plants, for which it boasts an 80% efficiency rating. When there is surplus power in the grid, for example from wind or solar energy providers, the system can rapidly switch from power production to power utilization. It then produces hydrogen or methane to store energy and stabilize the networks. The power plants are operated in standardized and scalable container units.

The start-up, founded in 2022, emerged from a research project at the Chair of Energy Systems. It was supported in the TUM Venture Lab ChemSPACE, the XPRENEURS incubator program and the TechFounders accelerator program at UnternehmerTUM. Reverion is now successfully working in the market with more than 100 employees.

Planet A Foods reached the final of the Presidential Entrepreneurship Award. The team has developed a process for making a cocoa-free alternative to chocolate using domestically grown plants. With oats, sunflower seeds and other ingredients, the start-up makes a product that tastes like chocolate and can be used in the same way for further processing. The advantage over cocoa beans: less water consumption, no risk of deforestation, and a big reduction in ‘food miles’. The company has calculated that this can reduce the carbon footprint by around 90%.

The start-up team completed doctorates or studied at the Chair of Food Chemistry and Molecular Sensory Science or at the Department of Mechanical Engineering. It received support in the TUM Venture Lab Food Agro Biotech. Established in 2021, Planet A Foods already has many large confectionary producers as customers.

Despite labor shortages and the struggle to remain competitive, many small and midsized enterprises (SMEs) are slow to acquire robots due to the high costs and potential complexity. For these companies, RobCo has developed a plug-and-play robotic system that is easy to install and intuitive to operate. The software can also be used without specialized skills. Thanks to their modular structure, the robots are suitable for versatile uses in a wide range of applications, including in the Internet of Things. The start-up also offers leasing arrangements.

Four years after its launch, RobCo is already successful at the international level. The technology is based on research at the Chair of Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Real-time Systems. Support for the founders came from the XPRENEURS Incubator and the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM), among other sources.

Alexander Pretschner was also honored. The professor of software and systems engineering received the TUM Start-up Mentor of Excellence Award. The award, which comes with 5000 euros in funding for the research chair, honors professors for outstanding and successful work in supporting start-up teams. Many researchers support teams that receive EXIST scholarships. This mentoring is a prerequisite when applying for these coveted federal scholarships. Alexander Pretschner has supported seven start-up teams. He has also served on the Board of Directors of the Center for Digital Technology and Management (CDTM) for many years. The CDTM offers a supplementary degree program in which students work in interdisciplinary teams to design new technologies, turn them into real products and prepare to launch a start-up.