Uber investing in 4 European startups who won UberPITCH program

This May, Uber had said that it was planning to bring its UberPITCH program to Europe. In a follow-up move, Uber co-founder and CEO Travis Kalanick has announced that his company has invested in four fledgling European startups.

Uber says that more than 4,000 pitches were submitted from entrepreneurs in 37 cities across 21 countries in the continent for its UberPITCH program which allowed budding entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas and products to local investors in the back of a car. Out of these, four applicants successfully made it to the second round — an invitation to Berlin to spend more time with venture capitalists and participate in conferences and “incubator mashups.”

Kalanick was also in attendance and apparently, was so impressed with the quartet that he elected to make a direct investment in all four companies through Uber.

According to Kalanick, Uber will now make direct investments into these startups. The company hasn’t revealed the weight of these funds, except saying that they were small.

The first company to win the funds from Uber is Brigad. Based in France, this startup was launched in January 2016 by FlorentMalbranche. It aims to connect restaurants with their staff. In fact, the service provided by this company is already being used by over 300 restaurants and a thousand waiters. Then there’s also Britain’s Memrica, founded by Mary Matthews (above), which is an app designed to help those with memory problems keep on top of things.

Next up is the Dutch company, Otly founded by VedranVego that is teaching children about the value of money and saving with this digital piggy bank. This service will be supervised by the children’s parents of course. The last one is Hipromine from Poland, co-founded by JakubUrbanski (above), which is setting out to research the potential uses for insects in medicine, meals, and in areas such as bio-fuel and oils.

“Being an entrepreneur is never easy — even the best ideas can struggle to get the exposure and support they need to succeed,” said Kalanick, in a Facebook post. “I’m excited to work with these four companies to help them reach their enormous potential.”