ViroPower runner up Chamber of Commerce Impact Award

Wednesday February 2^nd, the Chamber of Commerce Impact Award ceremony took place. During a two-hour live broadcast by the Chamber of Commerce, in which various speakers were present to discuss items as innovation and growth, the winning company would be visited by a camera team.

The Chamber of Commerce Impact Award is an annual prize given to an SME company in The Netherlands that has come up with the most groundbreaking innovation.

This year, mainly due to the corona pandemic, an important aspect of the selection of the contenders was that these companies all had changed their way of doing business. For example bring new environmentally conscious innovations to the market, add totally different products or services to the current portfolio, moving to a fully digital business model or other changes that have an impact on the world.

Adding a totally new product to the portfolio is something that Ultrasun International has done with the introduction of the ViroPower air purifier. This has been one of the reasons that, at the beginning of this year, it was announced that ViroPower was one of the top five finalists who has a chance on winning the Impact Award. The winner would be chosen by a voting system. You can imagine, it were exciting times here at the office!

Unfortunately, it became clear on Wednesday that the Chamber of Commerce team was in Tilburg to hand over the award to Vodde, a company that produces sustainable socks. Congratulations Vodde on winning the Impact Award. Our congratulations also go to the other contenders Attendi, 1minute and Orderli. For us it’s a pity, since we would have been honoured to have won this award. Nevertheless, at the same time we are happy and delighted with all positive attention from the media and lovely reactions from our partners, customers and acquaintances. Noticing that there were many customers who are so satisfied with their ViroPowers that they immediately started voting and promoting to vote for us has been an exciting experience.

The number of votes coming from our network was great, as was the attention from media such as Tubantia, 1Twente and Hart voor Hengelo. The Impact Award contest was also a topic of discussion on Dutch national media channels like Radio 2 and BNR News Radio, so that we as ViroPower have had the opportunity to explain several times why air purification is of great importance and what the device can do to prevent virus outbreaks and even lockdowns in the future.

Through our special ViroPower voting website page we had more than 600 unique visitors who visited the website. And also our international network of Ultrasun and ViroPower partners contributed to increase our number of votes.

The appreciation of being the runner up of the Impact Award is wonderful. Especially for the time and effort our colleagues have put in the product. Started with an idea that was conceived on a Friday afternoon, the first prototype of the ViroPower was build the week after. With help of many colleagues, this first prototype was developed into a full-fledged product, which was tested and approved upon by the TÜV inspection body. With the ViroPower we are able to help many of our customers all over the world to keep the air inside their buildings clean and healthy.

Alltogether, being nominated for this award has kept us relatively busy, it also brought us a lot of positive job satisfaction. It has been an honour that a professional jury has chosen ViroPower from more than 110 entries as being one of the five most innovative products and services SME Dutch companies have developed last year. We hope that in the future our company will be eligible for this type of recognition with new innovations. Though hopefully not due to corona-related reasons.