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Breeding ground for business ideas and start-ups
The Venture Lab FAB is part of the TUM Venture Lab Network, which is also new and currently consists of eight decentralised start-up centres at all TUM faculties, with a further three in planning. This will create completely new opportunities for brewing and beverage technology at TUM for students, scientists and interested companies.
The TUM Venture Labs are a joint initiative of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and UnternehmerTUM (UTUM). The network of individual labs thus creates a unique, holistic offer in the field of entrepreneurship based on the research expertise of TUM and the start-up expertise of UTUM.
The TUM Venture Labs offer scientists and students a professional approach and support to exploit the potential of cutting-edge research in start-up projects. They focus on future fields that combine technological megatrends and high market potential and offer a combination of decentralised localisation close to the research labs and interdisciplinary networking and cross-fertilisation among the Venture Labs.
The overarching goal is the intensive promotion of technology-based start-ups from the university and thus the creation of a significant start-up environment and the establishment of the Munich Metropolitan Region as an important European centre for technology-based entrepreneurship.
The TUM Venture Lab Network at a glanceWhat do the TUM Venture Labs do?
Interested start-ups can found technology-based and scalable companies (tech start-ups) with the help of UTUM's venturing programme and the science network as well as TUM's infrastructure. The focus of the TUM Venture Labs is thus on accompanying those interested in founding a company through the start-up process to successful market positioning. A wide range of skills are taught on how to successfully found a company and secure financing. These measures thus maximise the prospects for healthy growth of the company and promote its sustainability.
To this end, the Venture Labs also have rooms, workshops, MakerSpaces, laboratories and other technical infrastructure. These are used by start-up teams to work out their business idea and also to develop and optimise products and processes. In corresponding events, there are opportunities for the exchange of ideas, contact with industry and possible investors.
The Venture Lab in Weihenstephan
The TUM Venture Lab Food-Agro-Biotech (FAB) has been established at the TUM School of Life Sciences since September 2020. It will be fully operational in spring 2021 and is currently home to eleven start-ups. The core technical areas here are all research disciplines that exist at the TUM Campus in Weihenstephan.
The Venture Lab FAB is located in Weihenstephan in the likewise new TUM Food & Agro Center for Innovation and Technology (FACIT), which in future will organise and look after the old food technology centre on campus. Here, TUM chairs and start-ups can access an extensive infrastructure of laboratories, workshops, secure food production rooms and also a co-working space ("open-plan office with working 4.0").
Start-up "Like Louis" in the fermentation of kombuchaInterdisciplinary networking
In addition to the infrastructure, the support offer is completed in particular by the strong interdisciplinary network between the Venture Labs. With the Venture Labs Healthcare at the Klinikum Rechts der Isar or ChemSpace at the Garching Research Centre, biotechnological start-up projects in particular are supported. This is a decisive added value, especially for the biotechnology of beverages and food. With the Venture Labs Robotics/AI and Software/AI (also in Garching), start-ups from automation and digitalisation in the food and agricultural sectors find scientific contact points. In interaction with the Faculty of Architecture (here Venture Lab Built Environment), Weihenstephan start-ups can also benefit from unexpected synergies, for example when it comes to vertical farming in urban areas.
The innovation competition for beverages and food has also found a new home at the TUM Venture Lab FAB, here are the participants of the final round from the year 2019Offers for academics and students
In addition to the direct support of start-up activities, the second main task of the TUM Venture Lab FAB is to raise awareness among scientists and students. There is already an extensive portfolio for this with offers via the Weihenstephan Graduate Centre, impulse lectures from industry and formats for students. These are mainly programmes organised by the Venture Lab in cooperation with UTUM. Many more events are planned for the near future, such as hackathons, innovation competitions and networking events, which are currently only possible to a limited extent due to the Corona pandemic.
One event with a long tradition has already found an ideal new home in the Venture Lab - the Innovation Competition for Beverages and Food (IGL). This was offered again by the Venture Lab for the first time in 2021 after a two-year break and enjoyed great interest among students. In the future, there are plans to expand this format even further and to extend it to additional fields in the faculty.
Interface between start-ups and industry
The third core element is the servicing of a large ecosystem in the food/beverage, agricultural and biotechnology sectors. For this purpose, the Venture Lab acts as a meeting point for its core industries, start-ups and the scientific community. In addition, strong national and international cooperation with associations, other incubators and universities guarantees increased chances of success for start-up projects.
Cooperation between start-ups and established companies will become increasingly important in the future. Specially developed ideas from university research projects can thus find a quick transition into entrepreneurial application. The network between companies and future talents, who can pursue their own projects in the Venture Lab, also represents a "win-win" situation for all sides. The Venture Lab FAB is therefore looking for direct industry partners who want to play a decisive role in shaping the ecosystem here. BayWa AG was the first major supporter in 2021.
Opportunities for the brewing and beverage industry
For brewing and beverage technology in particular, the TUM Venture Lab Fab represents a new opportunity for students and scientists as well as for industry. The establishment of an entrepreneurial creative space enables the user groups to realise their own product or technology ideas. Thus, a student or doctoral candidate in brewing and beverage technology now has a TUM facility for his or her idea that shows them the right entrepreneurial paths and at the same time provides the necessary technical infrastructure. For industry-related research projects in particular, this can provide a significant additional benefit and a direct translation of research results into practice. Cooperation with the various start-up centres in the Greater Munich area (e.g. LMU, Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences, Fraunhofer IVV, Munich University of Applied Sciences, etc.) further increases the innovative strength in this sector.
Organisation and contact
The TUM Venture Lab FAB and the TUM FACIT are supervised in a joint professorial and operational structure. Prof. Arne Skerra has taken on the task of academic founding director. Evelyn Dachmann is responsible for the operational management of the FACIT and Roman Werner for the Venture Lab. In addition, there are many employees from TUM and UTUM who ensure comprehensive support for the chairs and start-ups.
