Berlin-based Female Founders Honored in Hamburg

Albert Darboven and Nina Heine from Shit2Power – © Idee Award

Hamburg coffee company Darboven, a well-known brand in Germany since the 19th century, has been running the Idee award since 1997. Partner and managing director of the holding Albert Darboven endowed this annual prize, worth €65,000, to help young female entrepreneurs implement their business ideas. This year, two Berlin startups came out on top. The aptly named Shit2Power by Nina Heine turns waste water into a resource, having developed a method for using sewage sludge as a sustainable source of energy to produce electricity and green hydrogen. An autonomous unit in a container can be installed in any sewage works in the world in order to produce power. Second place went to founders Anina Langhans and Helena Rapprich from the Berlin startup LipoCheck. Their AI-supported platform is designed to help the early detection of lipoedema, a fat distribution disorder that almost exclusively affects women.