EU – Baltic States, Latvia, Technology

"The national jury sought to find the most powerful representative for the world final, using five categories of evaluation – market potential, creativity, teamwork, risk analysis and uniqueness," says Karine Kalniņa, director of the Creative Industry Incubator of the Latvian Investment and Development Agency (LIAA). "The winner will now take part in the next competitions. First there will be the Baltic region competition in Helsinki in June, and then the world championship will follow in Copenhagen in July. We are doubly pleased in that the winner, BABBIT, was one of seven start-ups accepted by the Creative Industry Incubator earlier this year."

The events in Copenhagen and Helsinki will also offer master classes so that participants can better prepare for the presentation of their business idea and for sales at the international level.

BABBIT's business idea is an innovative music playing system aimed at allowing the youngest children to use Spotify.  Children can independently play music by putting toys on the system.  The selection of tunes was chosen by four professional musicians -- Ingus Ulmanis, Egons Reiters, Andris Sējāns and Kaspars Zaviļeiskis. 

In second place was TOOCHE, which offers unique, functional and comfortable handmade footwear from sustainable materials such as pineapple plant leaves and wool. 

Third place went to YoPlayDo, which is a platform for football academies and coaches so that they can monitor player data and statistics.  The software is like a high-quality assistant for coaches. The history of the data allows all involved parties, including partners, to track the progress and development of players.  Right now the company is offering the software free of charge in Latvia. 

The winners of 2^nd and 3^rd place in the Latvian competition will also go to Copenhagen, where they will be able to look for new partners.

The jury for the competition in Latvia included the head of the Business Incubator Department of the LIAA, Laura Očagova, the head of the Danish Cultural Institute in Latvia Simon Drewsen Holmberg, start-up expert Heidi Svane from Denmark, senior designer at the H2E design bureau Ingūna Elere, a co-founder of Gamechanger Audio, Didzis Dubovskis (winner of the national competition last year), and Toms Rusovs from Solfegio, who took second place in the national final in 2017.

The Creative Business Cup is a global initiative aimed at strengthening entrepreneurship and innovations.  Each year the search is for creative ideas so as to facilitate innovations and to help new companies all over the world to find investors and partners, enter the global market, find new contacts and attract additional finances to promote their business ideas. 

Last year, more than 5,000 start-ups from 60 countries applied in the programme, representing creative sectors such as music, architecture, fashion, technologies, cinema, media, etc. 49 companies made it the finals to compete for prizes and the title of the most creative start-up in the world. Gamechanger Audio from Latvia took 2^nd place in the national final in 2017.