Pipe Predict and Vote Base win Smart Country Start-up Award

The prize is awarded to companies with solutions in the field of smart city and gov tech.

The winners of the Smart Country Start-up Awards 2022 are Pipe Predict from Bergisch Gladbach and Vote Base from Darmstadt. The prize is awarded by GetStarted, the start-up initiative of the digital association Bitkom. The prize is 5000 euros each and a Bitkom membership. The prize is awarded to solutions for the public sector, particularly in the areas of Gov-Tech and Smart City.

Pipe Predict offers real-time monitoring of pipe networks for the supply of water and district heating. Founded in 2020, the Darmstadt-based company aims to predict burst pipes and thus ensure security of supply. Vote Base, on the other hand, comes from Bergisch Gladbach and belongs to the Gov-Tech category. Founded in 2021, the start-up wants to use blockchain technology to create a secure voting app.

For Daniel Breitlinger, who works as Head of Start-ups at Bitkom, the award ceremony is a symbol of the cooperation between business and administration. "Public administration and start-ups should work together much more frequently and more closely than before," he says. "For this to succeed, we need places to get to know each other, but also tendering rules that start-ups can also fulfill."