Our Startups
Founders: Faris Nizamic & Tuan Nguyen
Sustainable Buildings develops an innovative and user-friendly software application that gives additional insight and control into heat pumps, that way making heat pumps more attractive for homeowners and office building managers. The municipality of the Hague sees the urgency to become more sustainable and has a target to become energy neutral by 2040. This software application can contribute to this. Faris states, “If we really want to make change, we have to attack this challenge from multiple angles. We need to make people aware what is going on by presenting them data and insight from data. And the municipality has access to more than 200 buildings so together we can really make an impact.”
Founders: Karthik Mahadevan & Karthik Kannan
Envision is a tool that uses artificial intelligence to make visual information accessible to visually impaired people. Organizations and companies often find it difficult to recruit people with disabilities as they sometimes require more guidance. Envision’s goal is to empower people with visual impairment to be independent by speaking out the visual information in front of them. As a result, this tool could help people with disabilities gain access to the labour market. Karthik K. states, “We want to work with the government because it is an institution that has the motivation for doing good for the public. Startup in Residence showed us that the Municipality of the Hague is actually encouraging startups to solve this problem.” 
Founder: Marco Kortland
Urban Mining is starting a new type of crowd funding: not asking for money but for your waste. For every kilo of E-Waste handed in with us, participants receive a share in Urban Mining. Every year a lot of electrical and electronic equipment ends up in incineration facilities, losing valuable resources such as gold, silver but also plastic. Urban Mining operates in a community of upcyclers, making new products out of resources from discarded devices. Urban Mining invites all residents of The Hague to participate. Revenues are shared with all participants. The objective of Urban Mining is to create social jobs in The Hague by dismantling E-Waste and to give a boost to the circular economy by upcycling resources collected in our cities.
Founder: Arjan van Diemen
It is TrustTester Solutions’ ambition to help organisations become a more trustworthy, sustainable business, utilizing all technological opportunities but with respect for the individual by protecting personal data. TrustTester Solutions has developed innovative, widely applicable, easy to use software that enables one to validate information in a quick, efficient and secure way instead of data being shared. Organisations are GDPR compliant when using our solution. For the SIR The Hague challenge ‘Voting without borders’ we used our underlying patented technology to build the StemVeilig software solution. With StemVeilig, TrustTester guarantees quick, secure, and easy accessible digital elections. Arjan van Diemen states, “Our solution reduces the costs of the election process and makes digital voting possible while we ensure that the election process is safe and user-friendly. We foresee that we can also activate more Dutch citizens who live abroad to vote because we make participation in the election process easily accessible.” 
Founders: Bruce Westeneng & Sander Epema
Get Chef’s is a food waste pioneer which aims to prevent food waste at corporate and municipality canteens. By incorporating the external costs of food, consumers become aware of the true cost of food and the food choices they make. A recently 6 month study by Green Business Club Zuidas amongst 7 corporates (including ABN Amro & Loyens & Loeff) showed that 31.6% of food is wasted at organized lunch meetings (banqueting). The Municipality of The Hague also experiences food waste at it’s organized lunches. Social enterprise Get Chef’s developed an application for efficiënt, easy ordering of lunches. Using Get Chef’s application, both food waste and associated food costs will be significantly reduced. Additionally, leftovers will be distributed to the Salvation Army.
Founders: John Bilay & Roberto Viana
Avenieuw’s goal is to improve traffic management, as such the startup will offer the municipality of The Hague a data driven Artificial Intelligence (AI) all-in-one platform. The platform will consume large amounts of data sources, to analyze, predict, recommend and continuously learn through analyzing multiple data sources related to traffic information. In particular that startup will be looking at the parking capacity in the city during events. Avenieuw will initially focus on the popular seaside area Scheveningen. This area hosts lots of events and could benefit a lot from the solutions the startup has to offer. Avenieuw aims to recommend certain mitigation measures to minimize the traffic impact. To make the information accessible to both citizens and stakeholders the start-up will connect the platform to existing apps and websites, such as social media. In addition, traffic related apps will be able to integrate with our platform.
Founders: Anke Kuipers & Vadim Lazuko
Startup Eventpeak is an application that will help the financial district of The Hague, The Beatrixkwartier, thrive. The Beatrixkwartier is an area where lots of events and activities take place, however information on where they take place is scattered across various sources. As such, Anke feels there are lots of missed-opportunities to connect, network and share knowledge with one another within this area. Anke’s goal is to make the Beatrixkwartier a happier and more interesting place to work and do business. The application will connect the existing hubs and increase visibility of events and activities that take place in the area. The startup aims to change the Beatrixkwartier into a vibrant place, so that people that work there will have more opportunities to engage, learn, and connect. The Beatrixkwartier will be buzzing soon, as it will be the place to be for meeting up and doing business!
Founder: Daan Meily
The startup One Day The Hague will be developing a service for tourists that wish to visit The Hague. The start-up’s services will make it easy to plan a visit to the City of The Hague, as it offers complete packages which include tickets, bookings and tourist information. These packages are tailored to their preferences and interests based on data collected via the website. By offering a complete package based on a certain theme, a complete experience can be offered, which will leave visitors with an amazing impression of the city. One Day The Hague eliminates the hassle in selecting the best activities and provides people with a tour with carefully selected local hotspots while including a variety of local businesses. Tourists will experience the best that The Hague has to offer while local businesses benefit from the increase of customers that are directed their way. Daan states, “Our service should make it far easier for international visitors to have a truly local experience in our beautiful city”.
Founders: Bianca van den Engh & Dennis Roopram
Startup Driven To Impact is looking to solve the complex puzzle that surrounds healthcare in the Netherlands. The startup has experienced that information with regard to healthcare is often scattered and inaccessible especially for those who are in need of it the most. Dennis states “Thanks to our excellent healthcare system, we have a tremendous amount of resources. Unfortunately, the people that truly need it, often don’t know how to find it”. The startup Driven To Impact will collect essential information on health care provided in the Netherlands. Their plan is to create a platform which will be a central place for information on health care, as well as easy accessible and user friendly. This will not only benefit those in need of care and their direct environment, but it will also have a great impact on the economy as care can be provided more efficiently.
Founder: Hala Alhamed
Startup One Stop Shop will design an application that helps house owners to assess the need for energy efficiency measures in their homes. In addition, it will motivate house owners to reduce their CO2 footprint by illustrating the economic value of the home improvements. The app will also show the different subsidy options offered by various organizations. This is useful as this information is often scattered across different sources. Ultimately, the application will offer a full-package service for the specific measures so that the barriers of making a house energy efficient will be reduced. Hala feels that “homes have great meaning for us, home is where we belong”. Hala lost her home due to the war in Syria. She states “Losing my home in Damascus has made me realize that ‘home’ has such great meaning. I had no home to go to until I arrived in The Hague. I arrived uprooted and tired from the losses of war. Looking after our homes gives meaning to our lives. It is not a business, but my passion.”
Founder: Sharat Sreekantan
‘The Next Green Thing’ is an app that empowers people to design their own solar-green roof in a few clicks. Solar panel and green roof designs are often dictated by suppliers. Sharat plans to provide green and solar roof designs that bypass current issues of costliness, involvement of middlemen, lack of scientific knowledge, and esthetics. Imagine being able to design your solar/green roof just like you would do with your living room? The Next Green Thing allows users to create their own solar, green or combination rooftop designs. “Green and solar roofing is one of the major untapped environmental sustainability solutions today” according to Sharat. “We aim to empower the customers to design their own roofs, not only maximizing utility, but also matching their esthetics and taste. In this way, we envision our innovative roofing solution to enable green technology to become accessible to the public in a big way. So if you start seeing trendy looking solar-green roofs in the near future you are looking at The Next Green Thing!”
Founder: Prashant Shukla
My Clean City App is working together with the municipality of The Hague on some of the waste solutions the city is facing. Prashant founder of the startup always felt close to his hometown community back when he was living in India. People looked after each other and there is lots of interaction. Prashant states: ‘Having now called The Hague my home for nearly nine years, I have yet to experience this community closeness and I miss it. I thought of an idea that connects neighbors and simultaneously tackles a challenge the municipality of The Hague faces: waste on the streets. We’re working together on a solution that involves an app that helps neighbors to communicate with each other and motivates them to act on their increasing sense of responsibility toward the environment. It provides the necessary information about waste collection and it allows you to notify your neighbors and the municipality when the (ORAC) containers are full or clogged. If you want to get rid of still usable items you can easily offer it to your neighbors using the app. By sharing information about trash and reusable items, the app will let neighbors connect and work together for a cleaner city!’
