The four winners of this anniversary edition are BeatHealth, Beyond Words, Linup Ocean, and PimpUp. Created by the Montpellier Méditerranée Rotary Club with Montpellier BIC, these awards give winning startups access to Rotary’s worldwide network.
Award winners of Prix Initiative Startup competition ©A.Viste
The “Prix Initiative Start Up” competition
The Prix Initiative Start Up award is granted to three young start-ups at each of its editions. The organizers added a Special Prize to this exceptional edition of the event. This year’s winners were BeatHealth, Linup Ocean, and PimpUp, and the Special Prize went to Beyond Words.As is customary for this award, all winners are from the Montpellier BIC incubator, are less than three years old, and are headed by entrepreneurs under the age of 40. Their projects must meet six criteria to be selected, including economic viability, innovation, and relevance with respect to Rotary values.
Presided by Alain Chapellier, the Montpellier Méditerranée Rotary Club – like the approximately 35,000 other clubs that make up its international association – is committed to social and humanitarian projects. By creating this award with Montpellier BIC, the Rotary Club expanded its mission to help create jobs and value in the region.
The winners
The winners of the 10th edition offer compelling proof of this commitment. Founded in 2021 by doctors specializing in neuroscience, BeatHealth develops applications based on algorithms that detect the fundamental frequencies of the brain of the person being treated in order to assess and train their rhythmic abilities. Their goal is to counter certain pathologies. A spin-off from the Euromouv Digital Health in Motion laboratory, BeatHealth is currently focusing on treating Parkinson’s disease. A clinical trial is currently being conducted.PimpUp is developing a subscription-based system for selling baskets of fruit and vegetables that don’t fully match distribution standards. In addition to helping reduce waste, given that these products are usually discarded, the company’s solution not only improves income for farmers, but also helps reintegrate people with very few employment prospects, through a partnership with Croix Rouge Insertion Capdife (see article “Boosting jobs with anti-waste fresh food baskets”).
The grand prize winner of this year’s event is Linup Ocean, which is also doing its part to help the planet by supporting and preparing coastal communities and their populations in terms of coastal resilience. How? They do this by designing innovative, bio-inspired solutions that help protect people and property as well as preserve marine environments, and by pursuing eco-responsible activities.
The fourth award-winning startup, Beyond Words, is revolutionizing language learning through virtual reality, videoconferencing, e-learning, and face-to-face teaching sessions.
For this 10th edition, in addition to their prizes, winners received two lithographs signed by their creators, Hervé Di Rosa and Rachid Koraïchi. As with their predecessors, the winners will be able to benefit from Rotary’s international network to expand their business.
“That is one of the biggest benefits of this award,” explains Robin Alauze, CEO and founder of Linup Ocean.
