Hansab Group organized their first Pan-Baltic hackathon with the help of Tehnopol

Hansab Group together with Tehnopol Science and Business Park organised their very first hackathon involving teams from the Baltic Sea region. The hackathon was a culmination for the renewed innovation process developed together with  Tehnopol Innovation Manager Merilin Varsamaa and Tehnopol mentor Calum Cameron.  

The hackathon was kick-started with Testlio’s inspirational growth speech. The idea behind Testlio was also born during a hackathon. Testlio’s co-founder and Board Member Kristel Kruustük emphasized how important it is to build a solution according to clients’ needs, and then scale it.   

There were 6 Pan-Baltic teams (focus fields: healthcare, data management, retail, parking and access control, pharma industry) taking part of the hackathon and participating in various challenges to create an ambitious business case and validate with real customers. Almost each team had a client among the team members to first validate with a single client and then broaden the horizon to multiple ones.  

The teams did great job of adjusting their usual work routines and hacking within 48 hours to create a proof of concept, and a prototype by the end of the hackathon. The teams showed great teamwork, very high energy and the openness to learn new ways of business development. Teams were helped by clients, Hansab in-house experts and Tehnopol mentors – Tauri Tuubel, Karin Tikerpe, Martin Goroško and Merilin Varsamaa.  

As a result, two winners were selected to proceed with the development of their business ideas – Navigators (smart wayfinding in stores) and Sandbox (leveling up Hansab monitoring). Also, two other teams will continue developing their ideas – HERS (redesigning the waiting experience in Hospital Emergency Rooms) will carry on co-development with North Estonia Medical Centre (NEMC), and Entringo Lite (exploring new applications for Entringo ticketless parking) will be moving forward with new developments. Winners were selected by the honourable jury members Aigar Urva (CEO of Hansab), Lev Dolgatsjov (president of EstBAN) and Indrek Orav (CEO of Tehnopol).  

Thank you Team Hansab (Priit Ivanov, Sigita Babarskaite and Greta Babarskaite) for trusting us and making this innovative collaboration happen.  

Photos by Sander Peterson.