Young Aachen Entrepreneurs Receive Award from Minister Rösler

The RWTH Aachen start-up "terminbuddy" was successful at the nationwide "IKT Innovative Entrenpeneurship Competition", which had 300 participants. The Aachen team won first place in the category "Internet Based Services for Business". Last Tuesday, at the CeBIT trade fair, Dr. Philipp Rösler, Federal Minister of Economy and Technology, presented the award to the Aachen entrepreneurs.

 

In his address in front of about 150 invited guests, Rösler emphasized the economic significance of new information and communication techonologies, as they provide “important impulses for innovations and new business models in almost all economic sectors.” As the Federal Minister explained, “with their innovative product ideas, young ICT companies contribute to the economic dynamism of Germany as a business location.”

With their “terminbuddy” concept, Niklas Best, Tobias Mathar und Stefan Wamsler impressed the jury in the “special award” category so much that they received the first prize. The prize money of 5000 Euros was sponsored by the companies Siemens, SAP, and Empolis.

In addition to gaining access to an expert network, the prizewinners now have the opportunity to present their idea on the “Young ICT Businesses” conference in Berlin.

Using the terminbuddy application, customers have the chance to make online appointments with service providers such as hairdressers or doctors. The service providers get a software application for their appointment and resource planning which their customers can access via their web browsers or smartphone apps.

According to Dr. Christian Schulmeyer of Empolis GmbH, the application helps to improve the efficiency of small to medium service businesses. He also lauded the concept for providing sector-specific implementations of the software.

Terminbuddy, whose development was supported by the RWTH Entrepreneurship Center, among others, is currently being tested in Aachen with customers from the hairdressing sector. The application is scheduled to be publicly available from April 2013. According to co-founder Tobias Mathar, “the award is a welcome recognition for the hard work we have been putting in for more than one year now. We are very pleased that the jury is convinced of our concept, and we can hardly wait to make the platform available to our customers.”