“Let’s talk again in a year, let’s see what we have done by then,” Yorgos Piniotis told K. It is true that difficult times lie ahead. Mr. Piniotis, together with Athanasios Bemis – researchers from the Geodesy Laboratory of the School of Agronomists and NTUA topographers – Geoinformatics Engineers – founded the subsidiary TopoTronics IKE a few days ago.

NTUA is part of the corporate structure of the company. They started their research concept in October 2018 and reached its working prototype in December 2021. This was followed by a year of technical improvements to the product and required processes. Partners are now being asked to “measure” in the market the value of their research idea produced in the laboratories of a Greek university. The company’s goal is, among other things, to manufacture and commercialize innovative integrated equipment, mostly inexpensive, for the collection and management of geospatial data, with accompanying software for equipment management and data processing. The product is also aimed at professional engineers, as well as geography and drone enthusiasts.

“About 100 are techno-fields, companies that were founded in universities and research centers,” NTUA rector Andreas Butuvis told K. Spin-offs are companies based in universities and research centers that offer innovative products and services. They are proof of the scientific wealth of the country and the dynamism of our universities. However, their commercial survival is judged when they hit the market. “Few survive in business,” Mr. Buduvy notes, and Mr. Piniotis points out that in business, about 10% survive, and from this percentage, the company becomes a “unicorn”, that is, its valuation exceeds $ 1 billion.

The course of spin-offs is affected by the possibility of their financing. “Venture capitals that finance innovative ventures tend to place particularly restrictive conditions on techno starters,” Mr. Buduvy says. In essence, he adds, “money managers need to understand that technocrats need the oxygen to interact with the academic community.” This is of course a matter of copyright and prevention of theft – copying of the patent.

The aim is to increase the Greek AEI allocation by attracting international capital and talent to the country.

On the other hand, the Greek academic system seems immature when it comes to intellectual property protection. Very few strong research centers in Greece know how to turn an innovative research product – idea into a patent that can be used commercially. As an experienced leader in the field told K, “The patent offices of Greek universities are a good start, but they have a long way to go before they can offer significant assistance to research groups.” At the same time, it is also a question of the orientation of scientists and researchers. “It is important that spin-offs produce innovative products that impress the market, rather than provide consulting services,” adds the same executive.

“Technologists need guidance. One is a researcher, the other is an entrepreneur. And, of course, they must follow bureaucratic procedures,” notes “K” the chairman of the special permanent commission on research and technology of the parliament, university student Christos Tarantilis. An additional team of professionals is needed to “bring” a business idea to success. On the positive side, he says, there has been an increase in the number of experienced executives who can work for Greek startups. At the same time, the availability of investment funds for Greek start-ups is unprecedented compared to the past. “The quality of research carried out in Greek universities such as NTUA opens up great opportunities for business use. A goal of national importance, which I consider feasible, is to increase the technical fields of Greek universities and research centers, to attract international funds and talents to Greece.”

Horizons for new markets and suitable clients

Michalis Vafopoulos was a researcher at the Demokritos research center for several years – “there is a favorable environment for new ideas,” he tells K. “Together with fellow researchers and students, we turned the ideas we had into a European Horizon project,” he says, emphasizing that there was an incentive to test their ideas at a pilot level.

Through the fermentation of various ideas, applications and proposals, the startup Linked Business was gradually born, founded and CEO of which is Mr. Vafopoulos, a company that won the National Bank Innovation and Technology Competition in 2019 and helps businesses assess risks and find the right customers. Using publicly available information from the General Commercial Register, the company answers two different questions, Mr. Vafopoulos explains: “Where is my client?”. “Who is my customer?” “GEMI has 800,000 registered businesses – we have assessed and classified them,” he says, adding that they fix all the gaps in the registries themselves, create business cards and their detailed profiles, provide an open information platform that their customers — from existing companies entering a new market to teams creating new business can adapt to their specific requirements.

“In 2018, we started with five people,” says Mr. Vafopoulos. “Today we are 40 years old, we have offices in Athens and Thessaloniki.” He emphasizes that the stage in which they paid great attention was understanding the needs of customers and adapting their services and products to them. Although he himself has not been active in the research center since 2018, when the company was created, the connection with the scientific community remains. He teaches part-time, people from the university come to the company and, despite the fact that the offices are in Marousi and Thessaloniki, the headquarters of Linked Business remains in Dimokritos. Iliana Magra

European pioneer of regenerative medicine

PhosPrint has developed a pioneering innovation not only for Greek but also for European data. He invented a method of regenerative medicine using a 3D printer, which allows, at an experimental stage, to print in 3D the cells of problematic organs of the human body. PhosPrint is a subsidiary of the NTUA Research University’s Institute of Communications and Computers, co-founded by NTUA School of Applied Mathematics and Science Professor Joanna Zergiotis, researcher and molecular biologist Apostolos Klinakis, and Maria Pallidou, who serves as CFO for the company. The 3D printer, built by the PhosPrint team of scientists, can print 100 million cells in 1.6 minutes and focuses on bladder lesions, with cancer in this area being the fourth most common in Greece. Cell printing occurs during surgery (in vivo) in the affected area, which has been successfully tested in pigs. As Ms. Sergioti explains to K, the printer operator directs a laser beam at a small container that contains the cells we need to print. “The beam hits cells at high speed, which are immobilized in tissues and multiply. The short cell printing time makes our method suitable for surgical operations,” he explains.

PhosPrint, one of 75 European deep tech companies, is the only Greek company selected a few days ago by the European Commission for funding through the European Innovation Council (EIC). His selection by the European Innovation Council implies a total liquidity of €2.8 million, of which the company has to contribute €800,000. Dimitris Delevegos

A spin-off that caught the attention of Samsung.

In 2006, many years before the term “technology companies” became widely known to the Greek public, Innoetics was created. “Essentially, we are a subsidiary of the Athena Research Center and were created with the aim of commercializing technologies developed by researchers,” says Emilios Halamandaris, who until 2017 was co-founder and CEO of the company “…when it was acquired by Samsung and incorporated into a South Korean conglomerate “It took a long time to turn a lab prototype into a product, and it takes even longer to get the product to meet the needs of the market and work the way the customer wants,” he adds. was a text-to-speech technology for both Greek and non-Greek languages.Innoetics has been awarded the world’s best synthetic speech company for three years in a row, an award piqued Samsung’s interest.Mr. Halamandaris does not know if Innoetics is one of the first startups in Greece, but emphasizes that it was definitely one of the first spin-offs, and one of the first to be acquired by large foreign companies in 2017, K. “It is written that the acquisition was made for an amount close to 50 million euros. “We started as researchers,” he now tells K, “and along the way we became entrepreneurs.” After their integration into Samsung, they became part of Samsung Electronics’ AI team and now form the company’s R&D Center in Greece, which is led by Mr. Halamandaris. When the acquisition took place, the Innoetics team consisted of 7 people – now there are 20 of them, and they do not forget their roots. “We create time for young people to do internships with us, we also signed a working memorandum with the Polytechnic University – since we come from the scientific community, we want to have contact with young people,” he tells K. “It is very important,” says Mr. Halamandaris, “to be able to shape the people and skills that we want to have in the company.” Iliana Magra

Greek engineers with numbers

one hundred there are spin-offs in the country, i.e. companies based in universities and research centers.
5500 people work in innovative start-ups in Greece.
13.3% startups in life sciences, 9.4% in tourism and hospitality, and 8.3% in environment and energy.
65.5% and most startups are founded by a team of two or three people.
80% founding teams are made up of men and only 20% of women.