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Friday, 29.03.2024, 03:24
Latvia`s Babbit wins international recognition in a competition in Copenhagen
“Although we didn’t receive any prizes, several members of the jury
favoured us. For example, Mette Fløe Nielsen, a business consultant and business angel
investor from Denmark acknowledged that, viewed from a business perspective, a
limiting factor for Babbit is its
complicated production. At the same time, she added that would like to buy this
product for her family. We also received complements for the product design,
idea and special praise for our presentation. For this, many thanks to our
designer Maija Rozenfelde,” stresses Babbit co-owner Liene Roga, who pointed out that several product order were
received, which will be exported to Denmark, Canada, Finland and Serbia when Babbit goes on sale.
Commenting its rivals in the competition, Babbit gave best to the representatives from Australia, who also offered a product intended for a kids – audio stories. “As the jury later commented, the Australians received more points because of scalability and distribution potential, because their product is virtual,” said Roga.
“The main benefits were high level presentation training, expansion of
our network of international contacts, advice on the product from investors and
feedback from other participants. We received several recommendations including
a suggestion that we should create audio games with kids with educational
content. Contacts in 65 countries around the world and among CBC national
partners are also invaluable. They will be useful to us when we start our
crowdfunding campaign and in seeking retailing and information distribution
partners globally,” explained Roga.
Also present to offer support and observe the competition in Copenhagen
was the Head of the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia (LIAA) Creative
Industries Incubator Karine Kalniņa. “A wide range of businesses took part in
the competition with mutually incomparable business ideas at varying stages of
development. I believe that Babbit is
superior to a number of those presented this year. Although we were not among
the finalists, Latvia announced itself with a high quality product, refined
right down to the tiniest details, which is still only preparing to enter the
global market. Moreover, it is not just kids who are enthused by it – we saw
the joy and interest that Babbit generated,
when it was tried out by the jury and representatives of other countries,” explains
Kalniņa, commending the start-up for its goal-oriented approach and the work it
put in throughout the competition.
To reach the final, the competition participants or CBC national
finalists from 63 countries were divided into four groups, which presented
their business ideas in parallel rooms for pre-selection by the jury. Two
start-ups from each group were then selected to proceed to the semi-final. The
jury selected another four competitors out of all the national finalists. A
total of 12 participants qualified for the semi-final.
Overall, this year’s competition highlighted and focused on ideas with
broad social impact. For example, the winner was a Danish start-up Lapee (www.lapee.dk),
which has created the first women’s urinals. The runner-up spot went to a
designer from Finland (www.deafmetal.store)
who has launched hearing aids with silicon sleeves into which jewelry can be integrated. Meanwhile, third
place was awarded to the Czech Republic’s representative for designing
menstrual panties (https://getsnuggs.com).
Karine Kalniņa also explained that
special attention was devoted to business development in Africa and other countries
in the third world. Start-up founders in these countries receive encouragement
even if their ideas were not so much innovative as socially worthy. For example,
the concepts that made it through to the semi-final included recycling oil
barrels into furniture, transforming coffee grounds into tiles and recycling
plastic to produce glasses with a 3D printer.
The
business idea for Latvia’s national winning start-up Babbit is innovative music playing hardware, which has been created
so that the kids in a family can use Spotify.
Kids can play music independently by placing toys on the hardware. Music
playlists for children were compiled by four industry professionals: Ingus
Ulmanis, Egons Reiters, Andris Sējāns and Kaspars Zaviļeiskis.
The Creative Business Cup is a
global initiative, whose mission is to boost entrepreneurship and innovations.
The goal of the annual competition is to support creative ideas and foster the
development of innovations, helping start-ups from various countries around the
world to meet investors and potential business partners, reach the global
market, find new contacts and attract additional funding to facilitate the
further growth of their business. Last year, in the face of stiff competition,
the Latvian company Gamechanger Audio was
awarded in 2nd place.
For the past six years, the selection for the Creative Business Cup competition in Latvia has been organised by
the LIAA Creative Industries Incubator. The competition’s partners are: the
Ministry of Culture, the Danish Culture Institution, DELFI news portal, the
University of Latvia and Microsoft Innovation Centre. To date, Latvia has been
represented in the CBC competition by brands including Vividly, Connection Codes,
Anatomy Next, GIGI Bloks and Gamechanger
Audio.