Expanding with EEN

The Nüwiel startup knows how to make the most of Enterprise Europe

The goal of the Hamburg Startup NÜWIEL is to free our cities from atmospheric pollution, noise and superfluous motor traffic. Their electrically powered bicycle trailers seek to redefine mobility and improve the quality of urban life. This idea is now being spread throughout Europe with the help of Enterprise Europe Network (EEN), the world’s largest support network for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The whole thing kicked off with an Entrepreneurship Workshop run by our Hekate Project. There Sandro Rabbiosi met Natalia Tomiyama and Fahad Khan and together they developed the idea of an electrically powered bicycle trailer that could also be used as a motorised handcart. The point of an Innovation and Startup Campus is to ensure that good ideas like this are not left to their own devices after a workshop, as the idea is just the first step. Next comes plenty of hard work, much of it done in this case in Hamburg University of Technology’s Startup Dock. The first phase of the Startup was dominated by funding bids and very intensive coaching. Our Startup Support business unit works with a unique network to provide founder teams with support from the right partners at the right time. These partners include the promotional bank IFB Hamburg (Hamburgische Investitions- und Förderbank). This cooperation opened the way to startup grants from the IFB’s EXIST and InnoRampUp programmes so that NÜWIEL could develop their first prototypes and run trials in the city centre of Hamburg.

Once the first hurdles were cleared our EEN got involved, enabling a smooth transition from regional startup grants to EU-funded support and giving NÜWIEL the critical impetus for international market entry. Further details of this success story can be found on the EEN’s “EU OPEN FOR BUSINESS” website: