The VDMA Startup Radar Dashboard helps companies to find the right partner to cooperate with and provides information about the startup. Members can name a topic area they are interested in and then the Delphai Crawler searches for startups active in this field providing an overview on the company and link to the website and LinkedIn page.
What characterizes Startups?
Startups are young companies with innovative and scalable products, services, business models and technologies. In Germany, they are often grouped into four groups: FinTech (Finance& Technology), eCommerce (Online Shops), Green Startups (support the environmental goals) and Food. A characteristic of startups is the above-average growth potential and often, they don not have large capital and need investors to finance themselves. There are many other options for financing a startup, for example with money of friends or family, equity or loan money from a bank. Another orientation to define a startup is the cashflow. If the company has a negative cashflow, expenditure is higher than income, this indicates that it is a startup company. There are various definitions of the number of years for a startup. ‚Bytes for Business‘ defines startups, if they are under five years old whereas DSM (Deutscher Startup Monitor) defines a startup if they are under ten years old. The average number of employees was 19 in 2023 but this number changes annually. So, it is difficult to find a precise definition for startups.
Why cooperate with startups?
Cooperating with startups is greatly beneficial for companies in the mechanical engineering industry. Because of that, 83% of companies want to start a cooperation with a startup. According to a VDMA survey among member companies from 2020, the motivation for cooperating with startups are the following:
- 93% of companies that want to cooperate with startups in the next three years want to gain access to innovative technology, such as Computer Vision. Goal is to reach out to new target groups and learn about process knowledge.
- 90% of the companies want to learn about new business models. Startups can help with that because they think ‚Out of the box‘ and try new things. Companies also want to invent new products and startups help with that too.
- 63% of the companies want an innovative company image in the public eye.
- 57% of the companies want to find skilled workers through cooperation with startups.
- 51% of the companies would like to gain an insight into the startup culture.
In general, the purpose of cooperation is to increase the competitiveness of the company in existing and new markets.
Startups in Machine Vision
According to VDMA Startup Radar Dashboard, 3,109 startups show up when searching for ‚computer vision‘, ‚image processing‘ or ‚machine vision‘ in Europe, founded after 2016. A large part (730), is located in the United Kingdom. Other hotspot countries are Germany and France. The technologies cal fields are AI , Augmented and Visual Reality and 3D printing. The main applications are in the areas of soft- and hardware, sports and gaming. The Dashboard also informs about the fundings. In the area of machine vision, there was a funding of €25.4b from all tracked funding activities of 529 different startups. The largest fundraising round amounted to €5.6b to a startup called Diptera.ai. They work in the pest control industry and were founded in 2017.
