In previous articles we have already discussed what to consider when choosing a new location for a branch and which pitfalls to avoid. One key aspect in determining the success of a potential new shop is the environment. Do points of interest that attract visitors exist- if so, what kind of visitors? What other shops can be found here, are there competitors or complementary shops?

It’s no coincidence that retail activity is usually clustered in city centers and secondary shopping areas. On the one hand, locating close to competitors leads to the so called “competition effect”, meaning higher price competition and hence lower revenues. On the other hand, competitor and complementary shops nearby increases the overall attractiveness of the area and therefore capture more consumers. This is known as the “agglomeration effect”.  

The predominance of one effect over the other mostly depends on the type of business and especially on the possibility to differentiate the product that the business offers. For instance, gas stations offer a standard product where the price competition plays the most important role. Clothing shops offer instead a different range of products and can benefit from the presence of similar shops nearby. 

This is not surprising, those who want to buy clothes will find a wider choice in a shopping area with several clothing shops. The other shops act as traffic magnets, attracting more potential customers who might not have visited the store otherwise. This makes clothing brands the prime example of retailers that benefit from the proximity of competitors. They not only help increase footfall in the area, they even attract the right clientele who are looking to buy. 

This explains why the concept of “business clusters”, or more specifically, “shop clusters”, is extremely relevant in the retail sector. Shop clusters can be defined as a group of shops with similar or different characteristics that occur closely together.  We at Targomo use four attributes to distinguish between different types of clusters: 

The cluster size is determined by the number of shops that constitute the cluster. Usually, the more shops the cluster can offer, the more visitors it is expected to attract. 

How many different categories of shops constitute the cluster? How many different categories of shops make up the cluster? Is it a fashion strip, do furniture outlets congregate here? Or is the cluster perhaps defined by complementary shops such as a pharmacy, supermarket and drugstore? Industry clusters in particular can have a very positive effect on shops in the same category. 

What is the average price of the shops that form the cluster? As the saying goes, ‘Birds of a feather flock together’, and this can also apply to retail if they attract the same target groups. That’s why you usually see classy designer stores next to each other, but a jeweller only rarely next to a discounter. 

Do most well-known and popular brands compose the cluster, or independent shops and alternative designer labels? Here, too, like-minded shops often come together to define the character of a shopping street.

Investigating the impact of different types of clusters provides retailers with highly valuable insights into which characteristics drive their business success and what they should look for when selecting their next site. In fact, it is not only a matter of the quantity of footfall, but more importantly about the quality of the footfall around a store.   

To increase its profits, a business should locate itself in an area that attracts the right people. In other words, it should locate itself as close as possible to shops from which it could profit because they have the same target audience.  

At Targomo, our ‘success driver’ analysis looks at whether, and to what extent, being part of a particular shop cluster has a positive effect on sales. If we can determine correlations, retailers not only know which location attributes they should look for when opening a new site, we can also determine the “weight” (e.g. importance) of these attributes. The weighted attributes can be integrated into our sophisticated Geo AI model – a prediction model developed to forecast relevant sales metrics for any potential site.  

Our approach consists of three main steps: 

The Geo AI prediction model then defines exactly which characteristics lead a location to success and to what extent the respective location characteristics are contributing to success. To give an example: The results of a recent case study showed us that for a home furnishing retailer, price was the most important cluster characteristic. The brand particularly benefited from having many high-priced shops nearby. With this in mind, the brand has additional criteria when looking for a profitable area to open a new shop, specifically which are its best neighbors and hence the kind of stores that help making its business more successful.  

Author: Marta Fattorel is Spatial Data Scientist at Targomo. After graduating in Data Science at the University of Trento, she joined Targomo in Berlin to research the contribution of the various location factors to the turnover of the respective brands. 

Gustoso Group, one of the fastest growing branded restaurant operators in Germany, is supporting the expansion of business with new location intelligence technology from specialist Targomo. This is helping the company to efficiently identify the best locations for each of its restaurant brands Cotidiano, Ciao Bella, Ruff’s Burger and Otto’s Burger. With the help of the TargomoLOOP platform, the gastronomy specialists are able to quickly analyse the potential of a possible new location to assess whether it is suited to the target audiences of its various brands.

“We were immediately won over by Targomo. The interactive tool allows us to assess potential locations much more quickly and efficiently,” explains Andreas Reitz, Director Development & Expansion of Gustoso Group. Following a successful trial period, the restaurant professionals are now using TargomoLOOP in their day to day work. In addition to efficient data analysis of a location’s potential, based on its competitive situation, demographics, purchasing power and footfall, the platform also enables the structured evaluation of points of interest. These provide information about the area’s characteristics and visitor attractions, which makes it easier to assess the value of footfall for the company’s own business.

Andreas Reitz’s team uses TargomoLOOP to assess every possible new location and understand its respective potential for the various restaurant brands operated by the group. For example, a location that proves unsuitable for better burger player Ruff’s Burger might well be a good fit for Italian concept Ciao Bella. The varied requirement profiles of the group’s individual restaurant brands, along with key performance metrics from existing locations, have been stored in TargomoLOOP in a way that makes it easy for the gastronomy experts to work interactively with the platform. This allows them to assess the locations’ potential in real time via the user interface without the need to create reports.

With Targomo, the Gustoso Group can now drive efficiency into its processes. “Previously, we entered all relevant data into a huge Excel spreadsheet,” reports Stefanie Langhans, Senior Finance Manager at Gustoso Group, “but over time it became so complex that detailed analyses for each potential location became too time-consuming.” With TargomoLOOP, Gustoso Group can now carry out much more detailed analyses and ensure that it only visits properties whose locations are economically viable for one or more of its restaurant brands. “Leveraging the platform, we can minimise existing uncertainties when making location decisions,” Stefanie Langhans is pleased to say.

The fact that TargomoLOOP also allows to very precisely forecast possible cannibalisation effects of potential new locations on existing restaurants is highlighted by the managers of Gustoso Group as a particular advantage. But the gastronomy professionals have even more plans for the platform: In the future, TargomoLOOP will also actively suggest locations that are likely to replicate the success of strongly performing existing restaurants.

The managers of Gustoso Group are quick to praise the cooperation with the Targomo team: “These are smart people who bring great competence to the table. The strong cooperation is very valuable for us,” says Andreas Reitz. For example, joint workshops between the companies highlighted the roles of competition and points of interest, allowing the location search criteria to be optimised. For the Gustoso Group team, Targomo has provided great support in finding the best locations for the 14 new restaurants planned for this year and thus in pursuing its expansion strategy.

About Gustoso Group

The Gustoso Group is an innovative and fast-growing gastronomy company based in Munich. Since its founding in 2015, the group has grown through organic and inorganic growth to around 75 locations across Germany. The group includes the brands Ciao Bella, Cotidiano, Ruff’s Burger and Otto’s Burger. The company’s declared goal is to become one of the leading multi-brand restaurant platforms for the most innovative and successful gastronomic concepts in Europe.

The old adage “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail” has never been more apt than when choosing your next retail location. With so many factors to consider, as well as the pandemic creating shifts in how people shop, and a host of other trends to take into consideration, doing your research is vital.

Start your research journey here, with the help of this list of mistakes to avoid when choosing a new retail location.

While it makes great economic sense to expand your bricks-and-mortar business into multiple locations, it’s important you watch out for ‘retail cannibalisation’.

In the first quarter of 2018, Starbucks – the popular coffee chain with a store on every corner – was suffering from market saturation. With so many stores available, and a burgeoning competitor market, its stock plummeted 11.38% at a time when the overall market was up 4.1%. As a result, it started shutting stores in the United States.

Of course, healthy competition is great for any business, but in the retail industry, cannibalisation occurs when branches of the same chain that are near each other end up competing with one another for the same business.

The same is also true of competitor businesses. If too many similar businesses are located in the same catchment area, customer loyalty and preference is going to favour one business over another. An oversupply of locations also leads to higher operational costs, as Starbucks found to its chagrin.

So before you decide for a location, check how your branches influence each other. A good technology solution lets users immediately see whether the new store would “steal” potential customers from existing shops in the same area and how many. They can also see how many customers they could potentially win from competing shops nearby, and how a competitor’s new location might impact the catchment area of their retail stores.

In 1920, American mathematician Harold Hotelling came up with a theory called Hotelling’s Model of Spatial Competition. His model shows that when competing for locations, every business wants the “central point” as it is the most strategic spot to be as close to as many customers as possible. But because every business has ultimately the same intention, stores become clustered around the same location and end up competing with one another.

Putting that theory into practice, Marc Smookler, a United States retail expert, conducted a study in Austin Texas in 2015. He concluded that CVS and Walgreens pharmacies were, on average, only 1.5kms apart, and Walmart and HEB (a grocery chain) were 1km apart.

So sometimes you’re drawn to an area because that’s where the market is. But you should also know who your competitors are, what they specialise in, what their USPs are and how your business is similar or different. And most of all: where they are located. Because this gives you the chance to identify “whitespots” with the highest market potential.  

We’re all familiar with the concept of the strip mall (in Germany they’re also known as Fachmarktzentren): an out-of-town shopping area characterised by a centralised parking area and a parade of shops or big box stores clustered together. Over time, and even during the pandemic, these areas have out-performed city centre locations.

According to JPMorgan, “The pandemic had a major impact on retailers in city centres heavily reliant on office workers and tourism. But service-oriented strip mall retailers in densely populated urban and suburban neighbourhoods performed well throughout 2020 and 2021. These properties have consistently performed well regardless of market conditions.”

This successful recipe stems from considering other nearby businesses not as potential competitors, but as opportunities to draw the right target market to the location.

Complementary businesses offer products that relate to or complement yours:  a pharmacy near a doctor’s office, a bar near a restaurant near a hotel, a sports shop near a gym, a pet supply store near a veterinarian, a cafe next to a bakery.

We recently interviewed a retail expansion manager who said “for my client who rents out deposit boxes to store people’s valuables, I analyzed how many banks are located around a potential new site”.

So if you are looking for the ideal location for your business, you should also analyse which other shops in the area complement your offer and are beneficial to your business.

Understanding how people travel to your store is vital. Are you in the middle of a city where parking is at a premium? Are you out of town and far away from public transport? Do customers have to pay to park near your store? Do you sell large, bulky items that require a car?

It’s important not to overestimate how many people will travel to your store by car, and consequently underestimate how many will use public transport or other forms of mobility.

A recent study in Berlin, Germany, discovered that retailers often make the mistake of overestimating the amount of people who travel by car when they go shopping.

The report, which surveyed 145 traders about how they thought customers got to their shops, and interviewed 2,019 shoppers on two shopping streets in Berlin, discovered that shop owners overestimated how far customers travel to visit their businesses.

“Over half (51.2%) of shoppers lived less than 1 kilometre from the shopping street. In contrast, traders on average estimated that only 12.6% of customers live within this distance.” The results appear to show a big discrepancy between the perception of traders about customers’ mobility patterns and the actual reality.

Furthermore, the study appeared to show that traders often misjudged how customers travelled to their shops, underestimating public transport and overestimating car use.

“While only 6.6% of shoppers travelled to the streets by car, on average traders estimated 21.6% of their customers use this mode; a discrepancy of 15%,” says the report. “Further they underestimate transit, pedestrian, and bicycle travel by 8.1%, 6.2% and 3% respectively.”

Before deciding on a location, analyse it for accessibility, considering different modes of transportation such as walking, biking, driving, and public transportation.

Foot traffic is one of the hallmarks of retail. At its most basic, it means the number of people walking past. It’s one of the key metrics for retailers, as the pedestrian activity near a shop influences sales volumes and increases the chance of spontaneous buying or “impulse purchases”.

So if you’re deciding on a location for your new business and benefit from spontaneous purchases or visits, you should take a closer look at this figure. But be careful: often a general figure is not enough. You should also consider whether there are fluctuations throughout the day and how foot traffic behaves on weekends compared to weekdays.

Furthermore, you should also check what causes the traffic. Are vehicle data included, or are only pedestrians counted? Just because a location has high frequency doesn’t mean that people have the time for a spontaneous visit to your store. Therefore, Foot Traffic should only count visitors who spend at least a certain amount of time in the area, not just passing through.

But while foot traffic is important, it’s not the only consideration. During the pandemic lockdowns, foot traffic in some areas went down significantly as people preferred to shop close to their homes because of travel restrictions. Suddenly, hyper-local shopping became popular.

Because of this, it’s crucial to understand the demographics nearby, what the average household size is and how many children live there children, for instance. If you really understand the catchment area, you’ll discover how many potential customers can reach your location. This can give you a good understanding of whether the site is attractive or not and whether it will appeal to your target customers.

As a business owner, you probably have a fair understanding of who your target customer is. But defining who they are and locating them is not so easy. What problem is your business trying to solve for them? What is the benefit of your product? Do you serve a particular niche market, and do you have enough potential customers in your catchment area? What other companies nearby offer the same or a similar product or service as you? According to Marketing Donut, “successful marketing relies on understanding your target market. Who are you selling to? Why should they buy your product? What do they stand to gain?”

In a blog on WordStream, the writer Dan Shewan, said: “If you run a small business, maybe you have an idea of your target market. However, a vague idea is not enough to compete in today’s ruthless business environment. Without detailed knowledge of your target market, you could be losing business to your competitors or missing out on opportunities to increase sales.”

Ultimately, the right location is the place where your target customer visits or lives. With powerful location intelligence, you can unlock the door to compelling insights that could be the difference between business success or failure. With TargomoLOOP, you can analyse data such as population age groups, household size, spending power and lots more to help you understand how you can find and reach your target group.

Expansion needs to be well planned, and that’s exactly what McDonald’s Germany will be doing in the future with Targomo as its new partner. The location intelligence startup was able to convince the burger giant of its technology and the expertise it has gathered, and signed the global fast-food chain as a new customer. McDonald’s uses the platform TargomoLOOP to plan new restaurant locations in Germany.

“In the future, TargomoLOOP will make it much easier for us to evaluate new restaurant locations in terms of the relevant catchment area,” says Andreas Weber, Head of Real Estate at McDonald’s Germany. “The sound data basis and the intuitive interface were decisive factors in favor of a decision for TargomoLOOP.”

“We are proud to support McDonald’s in their German expansion,” said Niklas Gossel, Head of Enterprise Sales at Targomo. “Our analytics platform is designed to provide brands of large branch networks with a reliable data-driven decision-making basis. Locations contribute decisively to value creation but are also associated with high investments. We can use our technology to significantly reduce risks of bad decisions and strengthen the value creation of physical locations.”

McDonald’s serves around 1.6 million guests a day in around 1,450 restaurants in Germany, making it the market leader and largest employer in the system catering sector.

Interested people can register here to test TargomoLOOP for free.

Finding the right retail location doesn’t happen by chance. With so many factors to consider, from location scouting to customer analysis, an expansion manager can be the driving force to find the perfect place.

As retail experts, expansion managers have the industry contacts, the expertise and the technology to help store owners make an informed decision about where to put their business, whether it’s their first shop or your next. They can also take care of all the contract negotiations, providing retailers with a seamless turn-key solution that works around their business’ needs.

To bring more light to the work of an expansion manager and find out how they discover the best retail locations for their clients, we spoke to Samuel Vogel, owner of retail and real estate consultancy The Bird.

“I work in the field of real estate search,” explains Samuel. “I’m scouting for the right retail objects. Additionally, I examine a building’s technical specifications. I make a full location analysis. I also take care of branch network expansion. Everything really, up until the handover of the keys.”

Samuel Vogel advises clients such as shopping mall manager Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield and safe deposit box company Trisor. He has worked for several other retailers, including VIU Eyewear and bakery chain Zeit für Brot.

For Samuel, knowing his client’s customers is key to helping them achieve their retail goals. “My first question is always ‘who is your customer’,” he says. To give us an example, Samuel mentions one of his clients, Trisor, who rents out deposit boxes to people who want to secure their valuables away from home.

“This service is about the feeling of security, because the service is deposit boxes. Therefore, locations should be reachable 24 hours a day and have good parking. Furthermore, you want to know where there is a high density of potential customers, what their incomes are and what kind of products they buy. This helps me to find the optimal locations,” says Samuel. “The more questions you ask about customers, the closer you get to identifying the optimal locations, and the more you map their needs, the easier it is to find the right location.”

What the retailer sells and how it sells it is another important factor, whether that’s a product or a service. Some companies, like jewellers, benefit from a premium façade to convey the feeling of luxury, whereas a fitness chain would benefit from a solid structure that can handle heavy gym equipment, while a restaurant would seek an acceptable level of sound insulation and air ventilation. In the case of Trisor, its security deposit boxes are very heavy, so Samuel needed a building that could handle this weight. Again, with Trisor, the front of the building has to convey a feeling of security if a customer is to trust placing gold bars or other valuables in there.

“A visit to the places is a decisive factor,” explains Samuel. “I have to see the building and develop a feeling for the place. An image in a brochure can be perfect, but if something near the place doesn’t match the brand and product, that building could go off the list.”

The customers’ needs and the brand’s image determine the requirements that a location should meet. Samuel uses this list to request real estate options from his network of property brokers, and make a preselection of suitable locations. When retail space could be a good match, he will always have a visit in person.

“One of the important tasks of an expansion manager is to clearly explain to the agency or owner who might not be familiar with the product, what we are looking for,” says Samuel. “The landlord wants a reliable tenant with long-term plans. It is therefore vital to give the landlord a good introduction to the retailer’s business. If they don’t understand the product, they won’t accept me as a tenant.”

Once Samuel receives the real estate offers, he will rank them in terms of best fit for the retailer based on their needs and of course their customers’.

Knowledge is power, and when it comes to retail, accurate geo-referenced information and location data is crucial, from demographics of potential customers to footfall, as Samuel explains. “Firstly, I take a macro perspective: I look at the whole country and cities that could be suitable for my client. If it is a new business setting up locations, I still have an ‘empty’ map, so to speak. The logical step is to look at urban areas and big cities and see where the biggest potential is. Secondly, after I have identified specific locations, I examine these places with location data to see whether that site truly is a good match for the retailer.

“With Trisor, for example, I analyzed how many banks are located around a potential new site, and more specifically, how many deposit boxes are likely to be on offer there. We can’t get exact figures about the number, but I can make an analysis to estimate supply and demand. To do this, I used Targomo’s technology.”

With Targomo, Samuel was able to see how many banks and gold shops were located in this area so that he could make a supply and demand analysis to see if there is a need for this service. “The exciting thing about Targomo’s analytics platform is that it allows me to combine external data with internal data,” he says. “The more location-referenced data I have in the platform, TargomoLOOP the more accurate the analysis becomes. The more I know about my business, the better I can position myself in the market. TargomoLOOP allows you to scientifically compare different locations based on data and evidence.”

FREE TRIAL: Learn how technology supports retailers with site selection and expansion in TargomoLOOP.

Luukas, what exactly is Huuva’s business model?

Huuva offers a turn-key service for restaurants that want to expand and grow their business. We manage delivery and takeaway-only kitchens which are powered by our own proprietary software and technology. Our partner restaurants pay us a commission fee, already including delivery and rent costs.

This sounds like a shared kitchen?

Partly. In general, the restaurant brands get their own sub-kitchen inside the larger venue. What is being shared is the dispatching part. Huuva provides a shift manager who helps the restaurants in the packaging and dispatching the food to the delivery couriers. This operation is supported by our technology.

Compared to other ghost kitchen companies, what is different about Huuva?

We work to make the food delivery industry more enjoyable, convenient, and profitable for all parties involved: consumers, restaurants, and the delivery partners. For consumers, we bring top restaurants to their favorite food delivery platform. When ordering on a platform – whether it’s UberEats, FoodPanda, or whatever – they are able to combine menu items from different restaurants into a single delivery. You can think of this like having a food court in your pocket. Also, our customers can rely on hot meals and excellent quality, as the kitchens are optimized for delivery. From the restaurant perspective, our model is a low-risk and low-cost way to grow. Huuva doesn’t demand any multi-year rental agreements, we do not require any heavy upfront renovations or other investment cost, and we take care of regulations and bureaucracy that comes with setting up a new kitchen. With us, restaurants can start cooking and serving new neighborhoods in a matter of days. With respect to delivery companies, we are able to improve their KPIs and add quality restaurant offering to their platforms.

When you say that your kitchens are optimized for delivery, what does that mean precisely?

Optimization starts already with site selection. We choose locations that support high volume delivery operations, as they are frequently visited by couriers on bikes and scooters. We also plan a layout that minimizes the number of steps people have to make inside the kitchen. Besides the physical aspects of the kitchen, our software helps the different brands to schedule their cooking under one roof, so that multi-brand orders are getting done at the right time. This way, the cooks don’t have to do any tedious cross-organizing.

How are the restaurants reacting?

Restaurants faced enormous challenges during Covid-19 and the lockdowns. Additionally, we see that consumer demands and trends are changing quickly, especially among younger generations in large cities. Restaurant owners also see that change. As with startups, many restaurant brands don’t live more than 5 years, so you need to innovate constantly and ideally stand out from the crowd. We see that cloud kitchen approach can help the ambitious restaurant owner in tackling all of these challenges and support them with rapid concept development and testing alongside getting most value out of their existing brands.

As head of expansion at Huuva, how do you decide where to move your business next?

We have very ambitious growth plans over the upcoming years. Naturally, we started in our headquarter country Finland, but are already expanding abroad. We want to be present in the fast-paced markets with enough volume in the delivery business already today and an exciting, lively food and restaurant scene. One of the best parts of our job is to learn and immerse ourselves in neighborhoods, city and country-specific consumer trends and plan how Huuva would fit there.

Can you give an example of how these trends differ geographically?

It’s crucial for us to find out how common food delivery is in the specific markets. In the Nordics, a consumer orders a meal delivery twice per month on average. As a contrast, in Greece, the average number is 15. And in Central Europe it’s something in between. And the consumption profiles can differ quite a lot. For example, Indian is super popular in London and the whole UK, it is not as popular in all of the Central European countries. But there are also differences from city to city and even from neighborhood to neighborhood.

 What is your strategy when entering new markets?

We have two approaches: The first one is bringing top quality restaurants to underserved neighborhoods. We believe that the trendiest and hottest restaurants shouldn’t be the privilege of city centers or certain hot spots, so we want to bring them to areas where we see customer demand which is not currently met with the existing restaurant supply. The second approach is to work in these city centers and hotspots by helping the restaurants there to separate their delivery business from their brick-and-mortar kitchen. When the dining hall is full, brick-and-mortar kitchens quickly reach their capacity limit, making them miss out on potential revenue.

 How do you assess the potential of new sites?

We do our own scientific location analysis with Targomo’s platform TargomoLOOP. It provides us with all the relevant sociodemographic data that is key to understanding different possible delivery zones. Combined with its analytics functionalities, the tool allows us to explore geographic areas that are new to us and objectively compare locations. The second step is to then evaluate how the prospective venue supports our layout and operational requirements.

 Where do you see the delivery market moving within the next few years?

McKinsey & Company released a topical and on-point analysis on the food delivery market in September 2021 which highlights the fact that the restaurant industry requires new business and operating models now and in the future. The cloud kitchen space has already seen different models, from virtual restaurant brands, optimizing the use of existing restaurant kitchen space to simple kitchen rental models. At Huuva, we see that you need to consider the challenges of all parties involved in the restaurant and food delivery industry to drive real, sustainable change and growth. Nothing else is certain than change and we are committed at Huuva to delight consumers daily and enable restaurants and food delivery companies to do sustainable business.

Thank you for the interview!

If you want to use TargomoLOOP to expans your location network or create delivery zones, learn more about the location intelligence platform or directly book your demo!

As summer draws to a close and autumn takes over, Targomo is roaring ahead. The Berlin location intelligence startup is delighted about two recognitions: Firstly, the participation in the renowned German Accelerator program, and secondly the selection as finalist to compete in the EIT Digital Challenge 2020, Europe’s flagship competition for Deep Tech scaleups.

Together with 12 other German start-ups, Targomo is part of the German Accelerator U.S. Class 2020-4. Participation in the virtual German Accelerator program promises to be the beginning of an expansion journey into the US market for Targomo. The in-depth program is designed to help mid- and later-stage startups to enter international markets. During an intense mentoring phase of three months, the GA team will support Targomo with their experts in getting access to and entering international markets and innovation hubs.

German Accelerator is run by German Entrepreneurship GmbH and is supported by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). It is their belief that investing in startups is a means to directly invest in innovation.

Targomo has also been selected by EIT Digital as a finalist in its renowned pan-European competition EIT Digital Challenge. EIT Digital is part of the EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology), an EU body which fosters innovation and entrepreneurship. The competition focuses on startups in growth stage, so called scaleups, with deep tech products that leverage sophisticated, hard-to-reproduce digital technologies that fuel the digital transformation.

A total of 403 companies from 32 countries applied for the competition. They cover a variety of areas strategically chosen with respect to major digital trends and European leadership potential: Digital Tech, Digital Industry, Digital Cities, Digital Finance and Digital Wellbeing. The twenty best companies have been invited to an exclusive online final event on 12 November to present their technology to an international expert jury of corporates and investors. Stakeholder of the digital innovation ecosystem (corporates, investors, journalists and EU institutions) who would like to join the final event can apply here.

Targomo will compete against nineteen other European deep tech scaleups. Five winners will be awarded and receive a full year support by the EIT Digital Accelerator worth €50,000 to grow their businesses in Europe and beyond. The first prize winner will receive an additional cash prize of €100,000.

Stay tuned for the outcomes of the program and the competition!