Urban Quest is an Acceleration Program in the PropTech industry in Central Europe. Partners of the program are Skanska, Microsoft and Business Link, who are looking for new and unusual ideas for shaping office space. The winner of this year's edition is Elitmind which offers business solutions for building analytics.
The main objective of Urban Quest is to develop innovative products that will positively affect the development of the real estate sector and contribute to increasing the comfort of using office buildings. This year, 36 companies from 5 countries entered Urban Quest.
The winner of this year's edition is Elitmind offering business solutions for building analytics based on data analysis and artificial intelligence. The awarded company will start cooperation with Skanska and Microsoft in order to prepare the concept of testing its solution later this year on a selected office project of the developer. The solution will be based on Microsoft's cloud. It will also be able to present its product at a conference attended by Microsoft’s partners and customers. Business Link, on the other hand, will enable the winner to use its coworking spaces.
The finalists honored in the Urban Quest competition also included:
- Spantium - a mobile application designed as a platform for presenting architectural projects. It enables, among others, presenting a project, which is to be built, in its location in 1:1 scale thanks to the Augmented Reality technology or presenting a building using a 3D model, visualization, description, photos, 360 virtual walks or AR technology.
- Pragmasoft – analysis of office space use efficiency based on infrared cameras, which also provides information about space occupancy, users' working style, room temperature and air quality.
- ProperGate - enables more efficient management of on-site delivery logistics, including just-in-time delivery and scheduling of cooperation with subcontractors. It also provides monitoring of CO2 emissions generating reports for certification.
– Urban Quest opens up a spectrum of new solutions that we can test and implement on a large scale. These technological innovations will help in the business process through effective data analysis and visualization at key aspects such as the commercialization of office space, as well as its delivery and efficient management. The project awarded in this year's edition of the program might have a real impact on one of our office projects. Cooperation of three companies – Microsoft, Business Link and Skanska - allows the winner to verify his idea with the market and experts in different fields - said Anna Tryfon-Bojarska, innovation manager at Skanska office unit in Poland.
– One of the pillars of Microsoft culture is continuous learning. All the interactions that we undertake can be a source of inspiration for us, it is only a matter of attitude. That is why we have joined the Urban Quest initiative without hesitation, since it allows us to discover talents, interesting solutions for the PropTech industry and simply inspire each other to cooperate and implement joint projects. We are happy to share our experience with young companies - which we also do in our Starberry startup program, but it is equally important that we learn from them as well. Urban Quest is an excellent platform for such an exchange of knowledge and inspiration - said Wojtek Życzyński, Member of the Management Board of the Polish branch of Microsoft.
– Once again, we have received confirmation that this format for selecting participants and the support offered to them makes sense. Especially important for me and Business Link are projects that can be used as another significant element of cooperation with our clients. We do a lot to keep all the key trends within sight, so we are even more looking forward to being able to host the winners of the competition, who will become users of our offices as a part of the award - said Jarosław Bator, managing director of Business Link.
More information on Urban Quest is available at www.skanska.blpoland.com