Industries

Sub-industry

Description

Clean Energy

Reduces carbon dioxide emissions through significant energy efficiency improvements, the sustainable use of resources, or environmental protection activities.
Renewable energies such as wind, solar, hydro-power or geothermal are examples.

Example: Scatec Solar

Energy Efficiency

Using less energy to provide the same level of energy: energy-saving technologies, smart grid, energy-efficient buildings.

Example: Tado

Oil & Gas

Oil refining technologies, pipe monitoring systems, oil & gas transport tech or software.

Example: Crusoe Energy Systems

Energy Providers

Startups providing energy, such as electricity or gas.

Example: Lumos

Waste Solution

Process of treating solid wastes and offers a variety of solutions for recycling items that don't belong to trash. Solutions for sustainable waste disposal.

Example: Greyparrot

Water

Water treatment, water waste, producing industrial water, filtration technologies, water monitoring, and irrigation.

Example: Sallinova

Energy Storage

Technologies meant to capture energy to store it for later use, such as batteries, electric storage devices, hydrogen.

Example: Northvolt

Sub-industry

Description

Apparel

Clothing technology. It can involve the manufacturing, materials - innovations that have been developed and used. New fibres or virtual reality fitting for example.

Example: Vinted

Luxury

New luxury fashion items, VR & AR luxury experiences.

Example: Farfetch

Accessories

Accessories such as glasses, sunglasses, jewellery, connected accessories.

Example: Ace & Tate

Footwear

Footwear (Shoes) incorporating smart textiles, smart tech, wearable tech.

Example: Allbirds

Sub-industry

Description

Financial Management Solutions

Solutions such as software and algorithms helping companies and consumers better manage their financial operations and processes. Ex: accounting software, billing software.

Example: Taxfix, Spendesk, Linxo

Investing

Startups developing solutions assisting in investment decision-making or providing a way to invest in assets, stocks, securities, etc.

Example: Robinhood, Scalable capital, Raisin

Payments

Startups developing solutions to improve the way financial transactions are settled, how money is transferred between two parties.

Example: Klarna, Transferwise, Checkout

Mortgages & Lending

Startups developing solutions enabling digital lending (loans, lending platforms), providing online mortgage brokerage services, providing finance for individuals and businesses.

Example: Zopa, Lendinvest, Monedo

Insurance*

Startups developing solutions designed to squeeze out savings and improve efficiency from the current and traditional insurance industry model.

Example: Lemonade, Alan, wefox

Banking

Startups developing solutions, and digitising the activities, services and products of traditional banks.

Example: Revolut, Nubank, Mambu

Cryptocurrency

Startups developing solutions for the use, exchange and democratisation of cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, or financial startups using cryptocurrencies in their business.

Example: Coinbase, Ripple, Chainanalysis

Sub-industry

Description

Logistics & Delivery

Startups answering the delivery challenges in the food industry, with home delivery of groceries, restaurant meals or meals prepared in their own kitchens.

Example: Meal Kits, delivery marketplaces, discovery boxes, restaurant delivery, delivery robots

In-Store Retail & Restaurant Tech

Startups reinventing the restaurant industry. It means improving the management of restaurants and institutional catering, connecting customers and businesses directly to local chefs for catering and new experiences.

Startups developing solutions for the food retail industry, from the digitalisation of the supply chain to a better in-store shopper experience.

Example: reservation platforms, food service management. catering, restaurant software

Innovative Food

Startups developing new food products answering the need for more transparency, health and environmental concerns. Products range from market innovations to radical disruptions using revolutionary ingredients.

Example: alternative protein, future foods, meal substitutes, packaging, product innovation, drinks

AgriTech

Startups disrupting agriculture. They come up with solutions to improve farming output and quality using drones, sensors and farm management software. AgTech is also about new farm products, next-generation farms and urban farming.

Example: farm management software, drones & robots, urban and novel farms, agriculture marketplaces, ag-biotech

Kitchen & Cooking Tech

Startups developing new generation of appliances or cookware. They provide more technology, new distribution channels or more personalisation.

Example: cooking robots

Sub-industry

Description

eSports

Startups in the electronic sports sphere, where a multiplayer video game is played competitively for spectators, typically by professional gamers.

Example: ESL

Mobile Gaming

Startups involved in the development, marketing, and monetisation of mobile games (iOS and Android games).

Example: Zynga

Console & PC Gaming

Startups involved in the development, marketing, and monetisation of video games.

Example: Krafton

Board Games

Startups involved in the development, marketing, and monetisation of board games.

Example: Cards against humanity

Betting & Gambling

Startups involved in the development, marketing, and monetisation of online betting & gambling games.

Example: PokerStars

Sub-industry

Description

Medical Devices

Startups developing devices or instruments with the purpose of preventing, monitoring, alleviating or treating diseases and handicaps. Also the investigation, replacement or modification of the anatomy or of a physiological process. And the control of conception.

Health Platform

Startups developing digital health platforms with the aim of improving health management for both patients and service providers.

Biotechnology

Startups developing health solutions involving the use of living cells and cell materials for the purpose of bettering the health of humans.

Pharmaceutical

Startups developing and discovering new drugs.

Sub-industry

Description

AdTech

Advertising Technology (adtech) is defined as different types of analytics and digital tools used in the context of advertising.

Example: Marin Software

CRM & Sales

Startups developing tools and software for managing relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers.

Example: Pipedrive

E-commerce Solutions

Startups developing products and services that help a company conduct business electronically (its e-commerce business).

Example: Mirakl

Marketing Analytics

Startups developing tools and software to help companies derive insights and analytics from their marketing activities. To understand how their customers interact for example.

Example: 6sense

Sub-industry

Description

Mortgages & Lending

These subsets of Real Estate startups provide financial services specifically tailored towards the real estate market. These solutions will then be focused on mortgages, for example. Importantly, there might be an overlap with FinTech startups.

Example: Assetz Capital

Workspaces

Workspace refers to premises (either private or public), provided to help new businesses to establish themselves. These typically provide not only physical space and utilities but also administrative services and links to support and finance organizations, as well as peer support among the tenants. In Dealroom, a “Workspace” doesn’t take equity from its tenants, whereas an “Accelerator” does.

Example: WeWork

Search, Buy & Rent

These types of startups are generally platforms that facilitate the discovery, purchase or rent of homes/rooms. Often those companies function on a marketplace-based model, and their revenue is generated with commissions.

Example: HousingAnywhere

Construction

These startups provide solutions that facilitate the construction/surveying of real estate properties.

Example: Civdrone

Real Estate Software

These startups provide a software-based solution to make the management and overview of facilities easier and more efficient. Another interesting example is about companies that provide energy efficiency solutions for ‘smart buildings’, these, too, can provide software specific for the real estate market.

Example: SMS Assist

Real Estates Services

These companies provide services around the real estate world that cannot be categorized under the aforementioned categories. For example, these could include tailored customer service and interior design solutions.

Example: Happy Wait

Divided by value chain

Description

Reinsurance

These startups focus on optimizing reinsurance processes or acting as a bridge between reinsurers and insurers/insurtechs. For instance, acting as risk transfer marketplaces.

Example: Nayms

Product & price

These startups help insurance companies optimize the definition of their products and its pricing, often enhancing the role of actuarial in the insurance industry.

Example: Akur8

Underwriting

The process in which the insurance companies evaluate the risk profiles of the customer and decide if to establish a contract with them and what the level of risk of the client is. 

Example: Concirrus

Claim

The process which goes from the notification of a loss from the client to the analysis of its validity and entity of the damage and its internal workflow processing.

Startups in this field offer either workflow management solutions for claims handling or solutions based on IoT, computer vision, satellite imagery etc to assess the claim remotely and automatically.

Example: Omni:us

Distribution and brokerage

Startups with this tag offer either solutions to improve the distribution process for insurers, or act as marketplaces, comparator websites and brokers selling policies themselves.

Example: Xempus

MGA

Managing General Agent or Managing General Underwriter (MGA/MGU) are startups that do not have an insurance carrier license, so are not insurers, but establish partnerships with insurers/insurtechs who are licensed and give them the permission to carry the risk. So MGAs act in front of the customer as full insurers while not being it.

Example: Bought by Many

Challenger insurance

Challenger insurance refers to the insurtech startups which have a license and are so independent to create products and underwrite risk for clients.

Example: Lemonade

Full-stack insurance

Insurtechs, who like the challengers, have a license and cover the whole value chain but do not sell directly to customers or businesses but provide insurance as a service (IaaS) and white-label solutions to other players which then offer the insurance service.

Example: Element Insurance