Technische Universität München
Start-up Hula Earth is growing: Monitoring biodiversity as a business model
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF MUNICH
NEWS RELEASE
Start-up Hula Earth is growing
Monitoring biodiversity in the long term
- Start-up has developed a biodiversity dashboard.
- TUM alumnus Florian Geiser is among the co-founders.
- Following pre-seed funding, Hula Earth has increased its staff and moved to new premises.
Using satellite data and bird calls to determine biodiversity: that was the idea behind the launch of start-up Hula Earth two years ago. Today more than 80 small high-tech boxes are installed in the outdoors, constantly collecting data and transmitting it to the company headquarters. Project developers for moorland restoration, solar parks and nature conservation associations are already using the service.
Hula Earth has developed a system that automatically recognizes, processes and stores bird calls and sends the results to the company headquarters via radio. The most essential function of the solar-powered, shoebox-sized green device is to listen to nature and distinguish between sounds. “Bird calls in particular have been well researched,” says co-founder David Schmider, the team's inventor. “And birds are also a good indicator of biodiversity,” says the computer scientist and CTO at Hula Earth. What makes the overall system special is that it reliably recognizes bird calls. “In addition, the data is processed directly in real time on the device. This saves biologists a lot of manual field work,” concludes Schmider.
Dashboard with biodiversity indicators
The device registers bird calls within a hundred meters. In addition to local bioacoustic data, Hula Earth looks at the Earth from space and utilizes satellite data to determine such parameters as water content in leaves or levels of photosynthesis activity. All of the data are compiled in a dashboard that displays the biodiversity of the respective region, including figures on ecosystem vitality, leaf area index (the amount of leaf area per unit of soil surface) and water storage capacity. “Just like the climate crisis, there is also a biodiversity crisis,” explains co-founder and CEO Florian Geiser, a TUM alumnus and the strategist and visionary in the team. “More than half of gross domestic product depends directly on nature's services. It is essential to be able to measure the state of nature reliably and over the long term.”
Nature as a spiritual source for the business model
Hula Earth is now just two years old. The name Hula is derived from a Hawaiian dance whose spiritual source is nature, like the business model. Various customers are already working with the company to get a clear picture of biodiversity trends in the medium and long term. Conservation authorities want to track biodiversity trends in a renaturalized moor. Solar park operators wish to estimate the size of any compensation areas that may be required when constructing a solar park. And conservation associations want to demonstrate the importance of sustainable and ecological agriculture.
Hula Earth now with 12 employees
Six months ago, Hula Earth relocated from the premises of the robotics incubator robo.innovate, which is funded by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, and now has 12 employees working in its own offices in Munich's city center. “The support from robo.innovate was incredibly important for us,” says co-founder Geiser. “That’s especially thanks to the many contacts with other start-ups and potential investors.” At the end of last year, the first significant investment was made in the form of pre-seed funding that enabled the move and new hires.
Among them is Julia Roblick, a business economist and lawyer with experience in the venture capital sector, who will be responsible for business development, finance and human resources in the future. Roblick is convinced: “We are first movers. The market is still in its infancy and we have a product that works.”
Further information:
- robo.innovate is a Bavarian deep tech incubator for start-ups in the field of robotics and AI. As a joint initiative of the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence at the Technical University of Munich and the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, robo.innovate is also part of the activities surrounding Gründerland Bayern. It supports founders from the initial idea to the first product and market readiness. It connects and supports students, researchers, industry and investors in start-up projects based on their expertise and accompanies start-up teams on their way to a successful company. More information: https://roboinnovate.mirmi.tum.de/
- The innovation ecosystem centered around TUM is considered one of the most successful deep tech hubs in Europe. Its particular strengths are its strong and diverse network, as well as the specific support it offers. Start-ups collaborate on innovations in initiatives and co-labs with established companies, experts, investors and administrators. TUM and UnternehmerTUM, the center for innovation and start-ups, and the robotics incubator robo.innovate support start-up teams with programs tailored precisely to the individual phases of the start-up and its teams. In twelve technology fields, TUM Venture Labs offer direct access to cutting-edge research, technical infrastructure and market expertise. Most recently, more than 100 companies were founded at TUM within a single year and over 1,100 start-up teams were supported by UnternehmerTUM, the Venture Labs and robo.innovate. UnternehmerTUM, which invests with its own venture capital fund, has been voted Europe's best start-up center twice by the Financial Times.
Additional press materials:
- Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJHKN37mbH8
- Photos for downloading: https://mediatum.ub.tum.de/1838456
TUM Corporate Communications Center contact:
Andreas Schmitz
0162-27 46 193
The Technical University of Munich (TUM) is one of the world’s leading universities in terms of research, teaching and innovation, with around 700 professorships, 53,000 students and 12,000 staff. TUM’s range of subjects includes engineering, natural and life sciences, medicine, computer sciences, mathematics, economics and social sciences. As an entrepreneurial university, TUM envisages itself as a global hub of knowledge exchange, open to society. Every year, more than 70 start-ups are founded at TUM, which acts as a key player in Munich’s high-tech ecosystem. The university is represented around the world by its TUM Asia campus in Singapore along with offices in Beijing, Brussels, Mumbai, San Francisco and São Paulo. Nobel Prize laureates and inventors such as Rudolf Diesel, Carl von Linde and Rudolf Mößbauer have conducted research at TUM, which was awarded the title of University of Excellence in 2006, 2012 and 2019. International rankings regularly cite TUM as the best university in the European Union.