4vants, from Curitiba, was voted the winner of the second edition of EDP Starter Brazil, an EDP initiative organized in partnership with TroposLab Accelerator. The program’s final stage, called Demoday, brought all six startup finalists to the Cube, an entrepreneurship incubator in Sao Paulo. Miguel Setas, EDP president, opened the event talking about the main trends across the electricity industry and the challenges it faces moving forward.

At the projects from the finalists offer innovative solutions in areas, such as artificial intelligence, automated field service management, big data and analytics, new payment methods for financial services, smart education platforms and energy storage via batteries.

During the event, the startups were given an opportunity to present their initiatives to a jury made up of EDP executives, market investors and business partners, who chose the Curitiba-based company as the winner. 4vants will win a Mission to China from EDP, in partnership with StartSe, one of the largest entrepreneurship ecosystems in Brazil. The startup will spend a week in China attending an innovation-based immersion.

At the winning team will also travel with EDP to the WebSummit, one of the world’s biggest technology events, which will be held in Lisbon in November. At the WebSummit, entrepreneurs will have access to an “alpha stand”, a venue where they can showcase their solutions, boosting visibility for their initiatives and encouraging new businesses. In addition to all this, 4vants may also be assessed for an investment from EDP Ventures Brazil, the Brazilian electricity industry’s first venture capital vehicle.

At the winning startup’s solution is based on drones, which are used to automate electricity distribution and transmission grids using artificial intelligence to analyze images and any anomalies that are detected. The 4vants project increase inspection speed, optimizes maintenance management, eliminates risks to humans and reduces costs. Michel Sehn, 4vants CEO, said “the technical support from EDP Starter was critical during our mentorship. It helped us identify opportunities to improve our project and develop a value proposal that won the award. Our next steps will be to put the solution into practice, sing a contract with EDP and scale the project internationally”.

Dom Rock, a startup whose solution uses analytics and artificial intelligence to extract useful business information from unstructured data, took the second place on Demoday. The company also won tickets to the WebSummit and will have an opportunity to build ties with the European market.

“We believe in the Open Innovation concept and this entrepreneurship initiative is an example of how EDP works, prospecting new ideas and solutions to develop projects that make a positive contribution to the future of the energy sector”.  This is why the event is so important”, said Livia Brando, the company’s executive manager for Innovation.

Learn more about the winning startups:

1st place

4vants: Artificial intelligence platform for image analysis.

Focusing on: Digital innovation

Website: https://www.4vants.com.br 

Profile: An artificial intelligence platform that processes images captured by drones or optical sensors, helping to automatically identify faults/anomalies, inventory and monitor ongoing work.

2nd place

Dom Rock: Platform focusing on big data and analytics.

Focusing on: Customer-centric solutions

Website: https://domrock.ai

Profile: Dom Rock has a solution that captures unstructured data and voice (pdf, Excel, audio, etc.) that includes preparing and applying algorithms to deploy Analytics and Machine Learning.

The other EDP Starter startup finalists were:

Btime – btime.io

Ewally – ewally.com.br

MGov – mgovbrasil.com.br

Sami Energia – samienergia.com.br