Hamburg meets Singapore in ITS Future 2021

Three leading Singaporean start-ups pitched on December 10th, 2020, their forward-looking ideas on urban mobility and logistics during the “ITS Future 2021 - Hamburg meets Singapore" digital event. Organised by Hamburg Invest and Enterprise Singapore in co-operation with the Digital Hub Logistics Hamburg, ITS 2021 Hamburg GmbH and Digital Hub Mobility by UnternehmerTUM Munich, the fledgling companies pitched for the top prize of an exhibition booth at the ITS World Congress 2021 in Hamburg. Automated and connected driving, mobility as a service, ports and logistics and intelligent infrastructure are likely to top the agenda of next year’s congress.  

Future of mobility crucial 

Speaking at the opening, Chung Ming Law, Director of Transport & Logistics Enterprise Singapore, commented: "The future of mobility is of great importance to Hamburg and Singapore as port cities and centres of innovation." Singapore hosted the 2019 ITS World Congress and is considered a pioneer of sustainable urban mobility. Lee Lee Ong, Project Manager at Hamburg Invest, highlighted Hamburg as a business location, and noted: "Both Hamburg and Singapore are logistical hubs in their regions.” Hamburg's role as a destination for start-ups is likely to appeal to Singaporean start-ups. Tobias Brzoskowski, Project Manager at ITS Hamburg, offered an outlook on the upcoming ITS World Congress 2021 which will feature a conference and exhibition and various showcases. Hamburg is pursuing more than 100 active ITS projects in accordance with the city's ITS strategy outlined in 2015. 

Spectronik's hydrogen drive wins over jury

The ITS companies Spectronik, UNL and BeeX then pitched their business ideas to a jury including Suska Berger, Logistics Planner Volkswagen Group Logistics, Holger Schneebeck, Head of Innovation at DHL and Herrmann D. Grünfeld, Head of Traffic Management at Hamburg Port Authority. Jogjaman Jan, CEO of Spectronik, pitched the company's sustainable hydrogen drives for the coveted booth at ITS 2021. Hamburg proved ideal for the pitch as host of next year’s Intelligent Transport Systems congress and given the new HY-5 initiative, which aims to transform northern Germany into Europe's leading hydrogen region, he remarked. 

Joint second for UNL and BeeX 

Pascal Verloop, Chief Product Officer at UNL and Grace Chia, CEO of BeeX, then pitched their business models and shared second prize. Around 75 per cent of postal addresses worldwide are flawed due to a lack of contextualisation, said Verloop. UNL aims to rasterise places across the globe in a bid to standardise addresses and set up universal addressing. Chia then presented BeeX's autonomous maritime system with underwater vehicles designed to simplify processes. The vehicles are likely to interest companies in the offshore and port sectors and offer an alternative to expensive, complex and dangerous large-scale underwater inspections, she noted.