Lalaland wins the Philips Innovation Award 2020

Lalaland has won the 15th edition of the Philips Innovation Award 2020. During the grand final, which was held virtually on yesterday evening, the Amsterdam-based AI company received a check worth EUR 50,000 and may call itself the most innovative student start-up of the Netherlands. 

“The Philips Innovation Award has already helped many participants take their first steps as an entrepreneur," said Frans van Houten, CEO of Royal Philips, and chairman of the jury. “In these testing times, it is more important than ever to stimulate innovation and entrepreneurship in the Netherlands and encourage the leaders of tomorrow to realize their ideas."

Lalaland uses neural networks to create images of artificial humans, enabling shoppers to turn their online shopping into a customized, personalized shopping experience. It offers a diverse library of age, size, and ethnic-inclusive models, which allows online shoppers to see themselves in the apparel of their choice.

Syntho won the Rough Diamond Award and will take home a check of EUR 10,000. Syntho is a start-up that provides deep learning software for generating synthetic data that enables the sharing of data without privacy and GDPR concerns. 

The Philips Innovation Award is the largest student entrepreneurship competition in the Netherlands. It targets students who plan to further develop their start-up businesses, as well as students with an innovative idea wishing to turn it into a start-up. Every participant benefits from expert feedback, workshops, and trainings. The award was initiated by Philips in 2006 to stimulate entrepreneurship and to support (former) students to realize their ideas. 

Yesterday’s edition of the Philips Innovation Award was live streamed on the Philips Innovation Awards website: www.phia.nl. Dutch broadcaster RTLZ will air a 10-minute compilation on May 25 at 9:15 hours CET, May 26 at 17:45 hours CET, and May 28 at 16:15 hours CET.