Start Cup Bergamo 2022, 12th Edition | The best business ideas awarded.
At StartCup, the Fondazione Pesenti Special Award goes to ValeU, a brand focused on selling trendy hijabs and ethnic shirts, promoted through a community of women sharing their stories and helping make the brand much more than just a clothing label.
The overall first prize was awarded to SIEve, an innovative project aimed at revolutionizing wastewater treatment.
Also awarded at the idea competition promoted by the University of Bergamo was First down – The fantasy football of American Football.
September, 30 2022 – The project presented by Navera Naveed and Mame Maty Gning won the Fondazione Pesenti Special Award, given to the proposal with the highest social impact among those presented at Start Cup Bergamo 2022, which concluded today by awarding the best of the 17 projects that reached the final phase.
Now in its 12th edition, Start Cup Bergamo is an entrepreneurial training and development project for highly innovative business ideas run by the University of Bergamo and supported by Fondazione Pesenti. Start Cup Bergamo 2022 is divided into two consecutive phases: Start Cup School and Start Cup Competition. . During the July weeks of the School, participants received multidisciplinary training from a faculty drawn from various university departments, acquiring fundamental skills for developing a business project. Numerous meetings with entrepreneurs and experts fostered the creation and development of new relationships. The students’ teams’ ideas matured, grew, and were refined.
Today’s final event, the Competition, saw the finalist teams compete to convince the Jury and investors of the validity and feasibility of their business ideas. During the event, students, professors, and guests also discussed business growth and innovation ecosystems in support of youth with Emna Neifar, Chief Commercial Officer of Cortilia (a startup founded in 2013 and the leading virtual marketplace for delivering local fruits and vegetables), and Alessandro Giudici, Strategy Professor at Bayes Business School, City, University of London.
Fondazione Pesenti Special Award: for the project with the highest social impact
The Fondazione Pesenti Special Award for the “project with the highest social impact” goes to ValeU, by Navera Naveed and Mame Maty Gning, which also won second place overall. ValeU is a brand focused on selling trendy hijabs and ethnic shirts promoted via social media through a community of women sharing their stories, helping make the brand much more than just a clothing label. This will be possible thanks to its social impact, enabling the Italian market to fully respond to the needs of growing communities.
The idea originated from the lack of role models for hijabi and Black girls who daily face many obstacles, often due to cultural prejudices, also linked to the limited variety of Italian brands offering essential products like hijabs and ethnic clothing that meet a deep need for belonging while also keeping up with the latest trends.
The name ValeU perfectly encapsulates the brand’s goals: valuing and expressing oneself and one’s values, including modesty, tradition, female empowerment, and preserving identity. An Italian brand offering a wide range of hijabs and ethnic shirts with a contemporary style accessible to all, promoting success stories of both hijabi and Black women through advertising campaigns so the target audience can identify with the brand.
The business model will be B2C, entirely e-commerce based, providing customers with hijabs and ethnic shirts made by ethical and sustainable companies. Similar business models have already succeeded greatly with brands like “Vela scarves” and “D’IYANU” in the USA, “Joray Fashions” and “Baraa Innocence” in Germany, and “Madina Paris” and “Adama Paris” in France. The goal is to fill this gap in Italy so that second-generation youth can feel inclusivity also through fashion.
The absolute first prize went to SIEve , by Yuri and Jessica Serra, an innovative project aimed at revolutionizing wastewater treatment. Wastewater contains many pollutant ionic species, from heavy metals to ammonium and various anions such as sulfates, phosphates, and nitrates; these pollutants are currently removed in multiple stages by solutions that deplete oxygen from the water. In line with the SDGs and Agenda 2030, SIEve will develop an engineered solution based on circular economy principles, combining several phases of secondary and tertiary treatments.
Specifically, it will remove anionic and cationic species, drastically reduce microbial load, and degrade certain drug classes. The filter will partly use ion-exchange technology, utilizing an innovative material synthesized from red mud—the slag generated by aluminum processing, currently stored in open deposits with high environmental impact. The plant will enable continuous treatment, and the material’s geometry will guarantee a high flow rate.
SIEve targets the primary market of water treatment companies, to which it will also provide consulting, design, plant optimization services, in-situ filter regeneration systems, and free collection of spent filters resold as inert filler, soundproofing, and thermal insulation for the construction industry (secondary market). The proposing group is a family business of siblings Yuri and Jessica Serra. Yuri, a materials scientist and engineer, serves as CEO and CTO; Jessica, a management engineer specialized in circular economy, is COO.
The third place went to First down – The fantasy football of American Football by Davide Vismara, Filippo Radice, Silvio Vismara, and Fabio Procopio. American football is a niche sport needing more recognition, especially in Italy. The project aims to promote the sport and help it develop in the European community. Currently, the only fantasy football leagues worldwide are NFL-based (USA league), but there is identified strong potential among European football fans interested in their own community and fantasy league (similar to soccer fantasy leagues).
At the closing of the event, Rector prof. Sergio Cavalieri said: “I especially appreciate Start Cup Bergamo’s contribution to shaping a new model of ‘Entrepreneurial University,’ which we intend to advance in the coming days through designing and offering extracurricular training paths aimed at fostering an entrepreneurial culture among our youth. Today does not mark the end of Start Cup Bergamo 2022 but rather the start of a project extending this contribution to all students, addressing the entrepreneurial education challenge in specific areas like health, digitalization, and ecological transition. The next months will focus on refining this new project, and the University will leverage contributions from all its scientific and disciplinary areas, as well as all players in the innovation ecosystem (companies, associations, institutions) with whom we already have solid collaborative relationships.”
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