The European Innovation Council (EIC), via its Business Acceleration Services (BAS) Corporate Partnership Programme, aims to bridge the gap between innovative SMEs and large companies. That’s what happened following the first EIC’s Corporate Day with Holcim in January 2021, where a highly innovative small company called Nanolike secured a successful collaboration with Holcim – more specifically the corporate’s logistic department & venture platform Holcim MAQER.
Founded in 2012, Nanolike is a company that specialised in measurement technologies. To help seamlessly digitise logistic processes by providing an end-to-end monitoring solution from the sensor to the cloud, Nanolike intends to become a global leader in IoT logistics optimisation and supply chain automation for IBC, silos, and tanks. Nanolike’s innovative and reliable IoT systems sparked the interest of Holcim – the global leader in innovation and sustainable building solutions – that select the startup to participate in its EIC Corporate Day.
Ever since the initiative, Holcim’s logistic department, Holcim MAQER, and Nanolike joined forces and followed together with successful Corporate-Start-up collaboration interactions: a first exchange of ideas in the right environment during the Corporate Day in January 2021, an NDA signature, the development of a Proof of Concept (PoC) in Greece and first key performance indicators (KPIs) successfully evaluated in October 2021.
When asked about the Corporate Day event with Holcim, Jean-Jacques Bois (COO & co-founder) and Stefan Huber (Director of Sales Germany) at Nanolike both explained:
“The EIC Corporate Day was a very positive and fruitful experience for us, we had the opportunity to meet many relevant people for our business. Ultimately, we were able to be matched with the right partners for Nanolike.”
Concerning the deal itself and how the negotiations were conducted with the business partner, Stefan stated that:
“During the initial stages of the deal in 2021, we first got in touch with Holcim’s German Logistics team. The business relationship and its development came after both parties met a couple of weeks after the event itself. Three months later, our solution quickly passed to the testing stage. Due to the process’s speed, by August we were discussing the potential rollout stage. In a few months, we had our first key performance indicators evaluated by October, travelling to Greece to begin the rollout phase by January 2022 and eventually signing the first contracts with Holcim Greece, plus with other branches or subsidiaries of Holcim all over the world.”
When it comes to the impact of the deal and what it means for Nanolike, Jean-Jacques pointed out:
“The whole process happened quickly for us. Thanks to this successful and strategic deal with a key business player, we were able to develop some product specificities and improve them for different markets. Initially, our product was targeted towards agriculture but now our product can be used in the construction industry as well – with more features specifically dedicated to this sector. That’s why receiving validation from a big corporate like Holcim was important for us, because it gave us added value, making the deal we had with them very important for us.”
Future prospects
With the current business relations between the two companies and the positive advancements they are having, when asked about what their future expectations are, Jean-Jacques and Stefan mentioned that:
“Apart from trying to enter new business areas, we want to attract more visibility towards our company. So far, we’ve only had this EIC Corporate Day situation that led to the success we have now, and we want to repeat it.”