Inside INNOVA Europe 2025’s Impact-Driven Startups

If batteries are to fuel the green energy transition — for everything from electric cars to renewable-powered homes — batteries themselves need to be greener. 

A key bottleneck with battery manufacturing comes in the cell formation cycle, the first charging and discharging of a new cell. Because this is largely done blindly, manufacturers lack real-time quality control, driving up costs and leading to scrap rates as high as 20 to 30% for new production lines. This is both inefficient and unsustainable as demand for batteries soars.

“So what’s our solution?” Arthur Fordham asked judges during his team’s 3-minute pitch at the third annual INNOVA Europe Grand Finale competition September 5 at ESMT Berlin. 

“At AcouBatt, we are a SAAS company that listens to batteries.”

The potential impact of AcouBatt’s proposed solution could be huge — if the fledgling startup finds its market. But in Berlin that day, the stakes were more immediate: a €20,000 prize and a year of incubation support at a prestigious European business school.

First, Fordham and his teammate Chris Xu had to out-pitch 10 other startups tackling problems just as urgent.

ENTREPRENEURSHIP DONE ‘THE EUROPEAN WAY’

INNOVA Europe was founded in 2022 by EDHEC Business School in France, POLIMI Graduate School of Management in Italy, and ESMT Berlin in Germany to promote entrepreneurship as a way of solving big world problems.  The goal was to spark competition between the business schools, their students, and alumni while highlighting Europe’s brand of impact-focused entrepreneurship and innovation. 

“At EDHEC, we believe that Europe has a unique role to play in shaping the future of responsible business,” says Ludovic Cailluet, associate dean of EDHEC’s Centre for Responsible Entrepreneurship.

“INNOVA Europe provides a remarkable platform for this mission: ten universities across the continent uniting their strengths to inspire and support the next generation of entrepreneurs committed to building a more sustainable and inclusive society in Europe and beyond.”

POLIMI hosted the first Grand Finale competition with just the three founding schools. EDHEC hosted the second in 2024 at Paris’ famed Station F, and the number of participating European schools grew to nine. 

This year was ESMT’s turn, with 10 European schools and an invited global guest, India’s S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research (SPJIMR). 

Organizers this year also teased the first INNOVA Barometer. Researchers, including Juliette Magnient, Impact Startup Program Manager at EDHEC, surveyed more than 400 early-stage European startups, finding that while 93% had implemented at least one responsible practice, only about 28% were tracking their impact. It’s a first step toward understanding how European entrepreneurs are putting responsibility into action, and where gaps remain. The full report will be released in October.

For Baris Efe, head and co-founder of ESMT’s entrepreneurship hub Vali Berlin, the competition is as much about shaping a European identity as it is about building companies. 

“If you think about the European dream, as I call it, Europe is based on several hypotheses and values. We have different cultures, different languages, different histories, but we agreed on a certain parameter and value system: human rights, equality between genders, between nationalities and so on,” he says. “But all with the same understanding of, at least for us here at INNOVA, solving global challenges through entrepreneurship.”

In practice, INNOVA rewards teams that tackle problems outlined in the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals. They’re not looking for the next food delivery or parking app. Efe calls it a distinctly European approach: entrepreneurship rooted in responsibility and a shared sense of purpose. The competition invites one global partner school per year to spread that brand throughout the world.

“We need entrepreneurs who are bold and solving big issues. And that’s what INNOVA stands for.”

TACKLING AI ENERGY AND PROFESSIONAL WASTE

Nearly 120 student founders, alumni, professors, and entrepreneurs packed into the Auditorium Maximum of Schlossplatz 1, the historic and stately home of ESMT Berlin. In the former banquet hall of the State Council of the German Democratic Republic – overlooking the cultural heart of the city – 45 young entrepreneurs pitched 21 impact ventures. Each team had just six minutes: three to pitch, three to face questions from a panel of seasoned judges with deep experience in impact entrepreneurship.

The projects varied as widely as the problems they chose to tackle.

From EDHEC, there was Tricycle in the Young Hope category, a start-up for recycling and repurposing professional waste, created by bachelor student Marine Viet. In the Rising Star category, three EDHEC master’s students pitched Abiliz, the first and only vehicle leasing option for wheelchair-adapted vehicles in France. The company is already incubated at Station F in Paris.

The two ESMT startups came from its Vali entrepreneurship programs. Saiver, co-led by Anita Garbin and Filippo Bernardoni, began in the Summer Entrepreneurship Program and aims to cut the carbon footprint of generative AI by routing queries to energy-efficient models and optimizing prompts. CinSOIL, developed through the NEXT program, has already raised a pre-seed round. Its AI platform helps companies reduce Scope 3 emissions by using soil as a natural carbon sink while improving biodiversity and soil health.

Each school sent two winning teams from national qualifying rounds: one in the Young Hopes category for early-stage ideas, and one in Rising Stars for startups already showing traction and market potential. Projects addressed challenges in one of three areas: environmental transition, empowerment and inclusion, or health and well-being.

For the second straight year, a team from Ukraine’s Kyiv School of Economics took home one of the competition’s top prizes. Hovanka, an adaptive mental health app led by CEO Kris Nadiryan, won the €5,000 purse for Young Hopes. The app that blends psychoeducation with practical exercises to guide users between therapy sessions. It aims to build emotional literacy and prevent more serious conditions as Ukraine enters its third year of war with Russia. (Solar Optic, a small Ukrainian, deep-tech startup founded by Mariia Alipatova, won last year’s €20,000 Rising Stars prize.)

“I’m originally from Ukraine, and despite what is going on, we are still creating and competing,” Nadiryan says. “These competitions play a vital role in helping us continue to create and grow our project. INNOVA is so well organized, and we have felt supported every step of the journey.”

ENTREPRENEURSHIP AS A SOLUTION

Choosing the Ukrainian startup was neither easy nor unanimous for the three-judge panel. That only underscored the caliber of pitches they heard throughout the day, says jury member and social entrepreneur Matthias Treutwein. 

In the end, Hovanka stood out for both the strength of its idea and the resilience required to build a venture in the midst of war.  Its app aims to support young people facing very real mental health struggles, an impact that could be immediate.

Treutwein, (ESMT MBA, 2018) is co-founder and board chairman of enpact, a non-profit association supporting entrepreneurs in emerging economies around the world. He sits on ESMT’s Master’s in Innovation and Entrepreneurship advisory board and is part of the BMW Foundation’s Responsible Leaders Network. This year, he also served as INNOVA’s keynote speaker.

“Entrepreneurship itself is a fantastic teacher,” he told the crowd of young founders. Its lessons include invaluable life skills like focus, attitude, communication, discipline and self awareness. Creating and developing entrepreneurs will be a key differentiator for leading business schools worldwide.

Speaking with Poets&Quants after the competition, Treutwein argued that entrepreneurship is one of the few vehicles we have for solving big world problems like climate change, social inequality, and global health crises. “The more entrepreneurship, the better.”

There’s an old line often tossed around to describe technology advancement: “America innovates. China replicates (or scales). Europe regulates.” It’s not entirely fair and no longer entirely true. Still, Treutwein believes the EU needs its own reforms to allow for quicker action in big decisions, but he also sees urgency and opportunity. 

In this particular moment – with America pulling out of big environmental commitments like the Paris Climate Agreement and threatening research funding for universities – Europe could step forward with a distinct brand of responsible entrepreneurship.

The founders who pitched at ESMT Berlin admittedly have privileged backgrounds. They have the backing of some of the world’s top business schools, access to resources and networks far beyond what most entrepreneurs could dream of. The earlier these founders confront issues like inequality and sustainability, he says, the better prepared they’ll be to use that privilege responsibly.

Treutwein wants more connections across sectors – between policymakers, academia, the public sector, and NGOs. Scaling solutions requires everyone at the table. Competitions like INNOVA, he says, provide that kind of meeting ground.

“In the end, it depends on people, on trust, and personal motivation to go to these events, to listen, and to think about what they get out of it,” he tells P&Q. “But also to say, ‘Hey, I know two people who should talk and meet.’ To be that facilitator.”

IF BATTERIES COULD TALK

Now back to what batteries would tell us, if we only listened. 

AcouBatt uses acoustic emission sensors and proprietary machine learning to interpret the sounds batteries emit through chemical reactions during formation. The signals detect possible problems in real time, helping manufacturers shorten production, cut waste, and improve battery performance over time.

“We can tell users what is going on in the cell based on the sounds produced. Is the battery happy? Is it sad?” Fordham told the judges. 

It turned out to be the winning pitch for Rising Stars. Founders Fordham and Xu won €20,000 and, just as importantly, a year of incubation services.

Fordham, a PhD researcher at University College London, has spent four years studying battery performance and chemistry at UCL and The Faraday Institution, an independent research institute for electrochemical energy storage. Xu just graduated with an MBA from London Business School. 

The two met as part of Luisa Alemany’s MBA elective, Innovation to Market, which pairs scientists with business students. 

“This would not be possible without the course. Chris made this happen, because I was just in the lab doing my research. He was like, ‘No, there’s an idea here. Let’s try to do it,’” Fordham told P&Q after the competition.

“That’s what LBS does,” Xu joked. “We provide the business people, but we don’t have any actual skills.”

While they have the software for their tech, the prize money will help them build out the user interface along with the user experience. It will also pay for hardware to assemble systems they can get in customer hands. The exposure may be worth even more. 

“Germany is an important market for us; it’s our beachhead into Europe,” says Xu who previously lived in the country for seven years. 

“Until this competition, we hadn’t talked to any European investors or networks. So this is our first real step into the continent to see what the environment is like and what opportunities are here.”

DON’T MISS: HOW ESMT BERLIN STUDENTS ARE REVITALIZING GERMANY’S POOREST CITY WITH BUSINESS INNOVATION and PITCHBOOK’S 2025 TOP UNIVERSITIES, RANKED BY NUMBER OF MBA STARTUP FOUNDERS

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