For more flexibility between the office and home

Helping people to organise their lives more flexibly with a technological innovation: That is the goal of the university's latest start-up, LowoTec, which has now been awarded a one-year EXIST start-up grant. The computer science graduates affectionately call their products "Alice" and "Bob".

The LowoTec team has developed innovative technical devices that enable users to move their workplace to any location with an internet connection and thus make their working hours more flexible. The founders, who were coached by the Start-up and Innovation Centre (GIZ), have now received funding of 94,000 euros from the Federal Ministry of Economics and the European Social Fund.

The three scholarship holders Axel Ritz, Henning Hoffmann and Wolf-Christian Gantert and their co-founder Guido Neun hope that their innovation will enable a broad mass of people to work flexibly from home and thus achieve a completely new work-life balance. Their aim is to make their product extremely easy to use without any prior technical knowledge.

LowoTec consists of a pair of devices: "Alice" is connected at the company, the second device "Bob" is taken by the user. This "pair" automatically establishes secure, direct communication via the Internet and enables the computer at the teleworking station to be integrated into the company's IT infrastructure. Prototypes have already proven their practicality in field tests and convinced the first users of their advantages.

The innovative hardware is primarily aimed at small and medium-sized companies and their employees. Studies show that almost three quarters of employees in Germany would like to have the option of working from home, but only around one in ten are currently able to do so. The founders want LowoTec to help make it easier to combine family and career, be it during parental leave or when caring for relatives.

The founding team has already worked intensively on the integrated development of secure data connections during their studies in various research and development projects at the University of Oldenburg. With the help of the grant, the trio now wants to use these results to further develop the start-up and enable employees to achieve a better work-life balance.

The EXIST start-up grant is a funding programme of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi) and is co-financed by the European Social Fund. In 2011, the BMWi recognised the University of Oldenburg as an EXIST start-up university. Since then, it has been recognised as one of the best start-up universities in Germany. Last month, the university received approval for a further two years of funding in the EXIST programme.