SociAbility, a UK startup working to provide reliable and accurate accessibility information for disabled people, is among the five Toyota Startup Award winners taking part in the new Toyota Accelerator Program. The initiative has been designed to help them develop and boost their business through training, mentoring and funding.
The four-month program will culminate in a Demo Day where each business will showcase its products and ideas, with a view to potential future collaborations.
ISDI Accelerator is leading the program – conducted remotely and online – for SociAbility and the other winners, Prosfit (Bulgaria), Seamless Vision (Israel), Wheeliz (France) and ABLE Human Motion (Barcelona)..
The competition aligns with Toyota’s evolution as a mobility company and its belief that when people are free to move, anything is possible. It also recognises the potential of startups to bring new inclusive mobility ideas to the market. The Toyota Startup Awards competition generated almost 200 applications from more than 45 countries, focusing on socially inclusive mobility, accessibility and disruptive mobility. The judges selected eight finalists to pitch their ideas at a finals event hosted in Barcelona. More than 3,000 people took part in public voting, after which an expert jury of Toyota and ISDI Accelerator executives chose the five winners.
The Toyota Startup Accelerator will offer a remote acceleration program to these five early-stage companies, which all have strong teams and demonstrate promising technologies. The businesses will be paired with expert mentors who will guide them throughout the program and help them develop their ideas further. The teams will also be given access to the ISDI and Toyota Motor Europe networks.
The event begins with a training bootcamp with global presenters who will share their business expertise and tips. The bootcamp covers a wide range of topics including Culture and Talent, Marketing, Investment, Business and Legal, Sales, Product, Innovation, Internationalisation and Agile. The startups will be introduced to Toyota’s business principles with presentations on Product Planning and Launch Management, the Toyota Way s and Research and Development technology topics.
About the startups
ProsFit has developed and commercialised a solution to provide accessible, affordable and comfortable prosthetics to millions of people who would otherwise find mobility extremely challenging. This enables the delivery of high-quality service provision and community-based rehabilitation in remote areas of low and middle-income countries.
Seamless Vision is building a robot to help visually impaired people with autonomous navigation in urban areas. It guides users throughout the urban landscape, helps them to explore new places and brings them back home safely. The technology combines multiple sensory systems with deep learning modules that constructs a human-like perception of its surroundings to enable complete urban autonomous navigation.
SociAbility empowers disabled people to explore their communities with confidence, ease and peace of mind by collecting and sharing detailed, reliable and accurate accessibility information for hospitality and retail venues.
ABLE Human Motion is the first lightweight, easy-to-use and affordable exoskeleton that restores the ability to walk to people with lower-limb paralysis.
Wheeliz is the first website dedicated to peer-to-peer wheelchair accessible vehicle (WAV) rental. Wheeliz enables wheelchair users to rent a car directly from a WAV owner.