● The tour aims at creating synergies between technologies such as Fintech, Foodtech, AI and Cyber arenas, and the different climate initiatives to save the planet.
● The tour kicked off in New York City, with stops in Jerusalem, Paris, Munich, Stockholm, and Bahrain before culminating at COP28 in the UAE in December 2023.
● Event attended by ambassadors, international leaders, global investors, and industry experts, as Climate-Tech startups compete in an acceleration program to tour six continents.
New York, NY- JVP, Margalit Startup City, Mini, and URBAN-X announced a worldwide initiative to tackle climate change: the 2023 World Climate Tech Tour, aiming at identifying promising start-ups and relevant technologies in various cities to combat climate change through global partnerships. The tour kicked off with a special event in Margalit Startup City NYC, with stops in Jerusalem, Paris, Munich, Stockholm, and Bahrain before culminating at COP28 in the UAE in December 2023. In each city, a roadshow will be conducted to allow start-ups to showcase their solutions to tackle the climate crisis and take part in the universal effort to save the planet.
Leading international figures who attended the event included: New York – Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine; Bahrain – Amb. Shaikha Aysha Ahmed Saqer Alkhalifa; EU – First Counsellor, Climate change, energy, ECOSOC, Martin Kaspar; Germany – Deputy Consul General, Mr. Wolfram von Heynitz and his colleague Mrs. Anja Klos; France – Deputy Head of the Development and Climate Unit, Mr. Alain Verninas; Israel – Deputy Permanent Representative of Israel to the UN, Amb. Jonathan Miller; and Sweden – Head of Sustainability and Strategic Communications, Sofia Hedstrom de Leo.
The new World Climate Tech Tour is a scaling-up move of the launch of the Margalit Startup City-International Climate Tech Center in Soho, New York this past September. Startups from around the world will have an opportunity to meet in person with the team of investors and multinationals, JVP, MINI, and URBAN-X, as well as join their International Climate Tech Accelerator.
Erel Margalit, founder and chairman of JVP and Margalit Startup City, stressed the importance of global partnerships and innovative solutions to combat climate change: “The understanding we need to join forces from core industries – FinTech, Cyber, AgTech, Food Tech and AI – to create a new firewall that will protect our cities, is critical. We cannot continue to address climate change in isolation or from a single perspective. The complex nature of the issue requires a multidisciplinary approach, where experts from different industries come together to create innovative solutions. That’s why we’re bringing together startups and technologies from various sectors and industries on this tour. We strive to create the next generation of climate tech leaders who will tackle the challenges of climate change with cutting-edge solutions.”
Speaking at the event, Manhattan Borough President, Mark Levine, said: “I am so excited that this is happening in Manhattan. We are very committed to solving the climate crisis and we know we need to innovate. We know that new technologies offer incredible opportunities to tackle this and we want it to happen here and it should happen here. We are in the middle of an incredible ecosystem of science and innovation and startups. At this point, this is the largest hub for innovation in the country beyond the San Francisco area- we are going to catch them, but we are a hub. This place is a magnet for entrepreneurs. It is a beautiful space, in the heart of Soho in New York. This attracts talents from all over the world and I am thrilled you are starting your world tour here in the best borough.”
Since the launch of the International Climate Tech Center, Erel Margalit has been actively engaged in establishing alliances with leaders from both public and private sectors across several countries such as Sweden, Denmark, France, the UK, UAE, and Bahrain. The goal has been to build partnerships and facilitate collaboration to combat climate change while pursuing an innovative agenda that aligns with an interdisciplinary vision.
“Our alliances with cities around the world are based on their ability to develop effective policies, while Israel brings the technology. The key to success is the connection between policy and tech, and together we can join forces to make a meaningful impact on our planet.” Margalit added.
The International Climate accelerator, led by JVP, Margalit Startup City, MINI and URBAN-X has attracted so far around 400 applications from pre-seed to series A. The applications represent over 40 countries from across the globe including the US, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, Russia, South Africa, as well as countries from Asia, Latin America, and the Arab world: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, the West Bank and Saudi Arabia.
The applications showcase a wide range of technologies such as AgTech, Cyber, Energy, Enterprise software, Fintech, FoodTech, Infrastructure, InsurTech, IoT, Mobility, Smart Building, Smart City, Manufacturing, Water-tech, and more. The launch of the second cohort is expected to attract even more promising start-ups and help drive continued growth and innovation in the climate tech space.
The event also showcased the following start-ups:
– Novele- located in New York City, Novele designs, manufactures, and sells energy storage solutions for dense urban environments. The first product, Energy Board, is an ultra-thin space saving energy storage solution designed for scaled applications in buildings of all types.
– FunForm located in New York City, FunForm is on a mission to impact climate change, reduce energy poverty and improve climate resilience for NYS communities while enhancing employment opportunities in construction—a big mission enabled by a single solution: simplifying building envelope retrofits.
– Gentian located in London, UK, Gentian leverages remote sensing data and proprietary machine learning models to accelerate the speed of ecological surveying while drastically reducing cost. This allows for precise biodiversity assessments and monitoring in the development of the lifecycle buildings–an increasingly important aspect of real estate management.
– It’s Electric, located in New York City, designs, builds, and deploys cost-effective, easy-to-scale curbside EV charging solutions. By connecting charging infrastructure and building owners, they avoid some of the key hurdles when it comes to the installation of charging stations in urban areas
– Seam Social Lab, located in New York City, is a benefit corporation headquartered in New York. As an MWBE-certified business, our Enterprise software has been used by more than three dozen government agencies and urban design teams to conduct and analyze stakeholder engagement. co:census, is a collaborative workspace for your team to Learn, Plan, Create, Analyze, and Work together as you conduct research projects for stakeholder engagement.
– Urban Dashboard, located in Tel Aviv, Israel, replaces outdated practices and revolutionizes the way real estate professionals plan their next projects. Urban Dashboard has developed a data-driven SaaS platform for early-stage planning optimization. By streamlining the iterative planning approach, Urban Dashboard gives planners and urban designers the ability to integrate and take advantage of an abundance of data layers and spatial analysis while also simplifying and shortening the planning process.
– Factoree.ai located in Tel Aviv, Israel, is focused on helping tens of thousands of factories better manage their emission-reduction processes by guiding COOs and site managers toward greener production processes and products, including using materials more efficiently, minimizing energy and waste, replacing raw materials and energy sources, and more;
– ClimateView located in Stockholm, Sweden, is a Swedish software development company for cities working on monitoring and visualization tools for greenhouse gas emissions.
– Dryad located in Tel Aviv, Israel, provides ultra-early forest fire detection as well as health and growth monitoring solutions for public and private forests.