This year’s competition was particularly intense – the nominees were only one point apart. The nominees for the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award were Jaan Hendrik Murumets from the company Krakul OÜ, Helina Kulper from the company SmartStuff OÜ and Märt Kroodo from the company 1oT OÜ.

Mait Palts, the General Director of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry said that it was extremely difficult to pick a winner from this year’s candidates. „Every year we have more entrepreneurial young people who are helping to develop the Estonian economic environment and are doing this in areas that are looking into the future and have a great potential to grow all over the globe,“ said Palts. According to him, Jaan is an excellent example of a good specialist becoming a great leader, even with no previous experience in entrepreneurship. „I believe that the story of Jaan and Krakul will be a great motivation to young people. I hope that in the future, we will see a lot of entrepreneurial people who are driven by knowledge-intensive fields here in Estonia,“ added Palts.

„It is a positive surprise that the field of activity of this year’s companies is creating smart solutions and building preconditions for the success for companies from other fields,“ commented Liisi Himma, the head of corporate banking in Swedbank. „Our industry studies also show that in order to stay competitive, enterprises consider the investments in digitalization and automation a priority for the upcoming years.“

„The best enterprises of Estonia have always been successful according to various generally understandable criteria. However, in the future, success will be defined by seeing further, seeing others next to you, sensing the signs of the future and knowing how to take all this into account when doing business,“ commented Kersti Kaljulaid, the President of Estonia.

The Young Entrepreneur of the Year is Jaan Hendrik Murumets, a 29-year old electronics engineer. Under his lead, the IoT development company Krakul has grown into an international enterprise in just a few years. The company’s growth has been based on equity capital, without any outside investments. In 2020, the company was also mentioned among the top enterprises of Gasell TOP composed by Äripäev, the Estonian daily business paper.

Jaan is also a populariser of electronics studies among young people. This summer, for example, he helped to organise a successful campaign elektroonik.ee targeted to finding and motivating young electronic engineers. The campaign was organised in cooperation with TalTech and the Estonian Electronics Industries Association. Jaan was the spokesperson and consultant of the campaign, introducing the life of an electronics engineer via outdoor advertising, digital media and social media. As a result, the number of new students starting their studies in TalTech’s bachelor programme Hardware and Programming doubled compared to last year.

As for solutions known to wider public, Krakul OÜ has contributed to creating the smart parking solution Barking, the smart bicycle parking solution BiKeep, the Starship package robot solutions and the AuveTech self-driving bus solutions. In addition, a solution created by Krakul is used by the company Valnes that produces smart door locks that are used by various schools in Tallinn. As for its most remarkable project, Krakul brings out the company’s cooperation with WeCheer.io. This is the project where Krakul’s team built the world’s first smart beer bottle opener. WeCheer.io is a marketing platform that measures the number of bottles opened in bars and other useful real time data about beer brands. The project helped beer producers to understand the impact and the results of their brand.

In July 2020, Krakul signed a partnership deal with Richardson RFPD, one of the world’s largest producer of wireless components. With this cooperation agreement, Krakul will be included into large-scale global IoT development projects. In the future, this will make Krakul the first Estonian company to become a development partner for such widescale international IoT solutions.

The jury included Mait Palts, the Director General of the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Aira Nigul-Lepp, the head of Swedbank’s Corporate Banking Department, Heido Vitsur, the economic advisor to the President of the Republic of Estonia, Anne Samlik, the CEO of Estravel travel company and Ardo Kaurit, the winner of last year’s Young Entrepreneur Award and the founder of Ampler Bikes.

The Young Entrepreneur Award of 5000 euro by Swedbank AS has been awarded six times. The competition is organised by the Estonian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Swedbank AS. The initiative is supported by Kersti Kaljulaid, the President of Estonia.