21 Feb 2019

DIGITALEUROPE Unicorn Award 2019 “Here are Europe’s future digital champions!”

“We have three winners – the future European digital champions!” said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director-General of DIGITALEUROPE today at the Masters of Digital 2019 flagship conference in Brussels.

Three future unicorns from Europe – MaaS Global from Finland, Teslasuit from the United Kingdom and Umbraco from Denmark – have received DIGITALEUROPE’s “Future Unicorn Award” handed out by Mariya Gabriel, EU Commissioner for the Digital Economy & Society, during a ceremony that took place this morning at the Masters of Digital flagship conference.

“Today, only 11% of the world’s unicorns are based in Europe, 6% of those are in UK – this is not enough! In DIGITALEUROPE’s Call to Action for “A STRONGER DIGITAL EUROPE 2025”, we set out a goal for Europe: to host 25% of the world’s unicorns by 2025.

Europe needs a fair share of unicorns in the global market. It needs a common strategy to nurture the creation of European unicorns and to enable European champions to become global champions!

We have partnered with our 40 national trade associationsto identify the most promising scale-up companies across 29 European countries and 35,000 businesses. The three companies awarded today have the potential to become Europe’s future global unicorns”, explained Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl.

In the modern digital economy, where scale is key to succeed in the global market place, the number of Digital Unicorns is a strong indicator of the ability to compete.

“We need to complete the Digital Single Market if we are to keep up with global competition. Europe will flourish in the global digitalised economy, be able maintain European welfare and drive digitalisation based on European values only if it remains united and capitalises on the size of its common market”,said Cecilia Bonefeld-Dahl, Director-General of DIGITALEUROPE in front of an audience of over 450 policymakers, which gathered today in Brussels.

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The winners of the Future Unicorn Award 2019 are:

MaaS Global from Finland

MaaS Global is the world’s first true Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) operator with its award-winning Whim app, which provides users with all city transport services in one app. With close to three million trips made since its launch in December 2017, Whim is the first all-inclusive MaaS solution commercially available on the market.

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Teslasuit from the United Kingdom

Teslasuit produces the world’ first fully integrated smart clothing apparel with Haptic Feedback, Motion Capture, Climate Control and Biometric Feedback systems. The suit is set to become the default virtual reality interface in games and entertainment, fitness and sports, wellness and healthcare.

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Umbraco from Denmark

Umbraco is one of Europe’s fastest developing Content Management Systems (CMS). With over 500,000 organisations already using the CMS and a steady year-on-year growth, Umbraco is on pace to become one of Europe’s big digital company.

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Background

DIGITALEUROPE – the leading European technology trade association representing over 63 multinational companies and 40 national trade associations – has organised the Future Unicorn Awardfor the second year in a row.

The award is compiled by asking all the national trade associations affiliated with DIGITALEUROPE to select one SME from their country. This results in a truly pan-European selection of sixteen outstanding digital companies from all sectors, including financial technologies (iyzico), education technologies (LearnUpon), eHealth (Turbine), mobility (MaaS), energy (Envelio), and many more.

Nominated companie