Venture Cup Idea Competition in Denmark is an annual business idea competition that takes place at the end of the calendar year. The winners are chosen early next year in five categories: applied technology, cleantech, lifesciences, services and software. The winner in each category receives 25 000 DKK (roughly 3,300€) to kick-start their project. Essentially, the competition is an instrument to reveal the most promising business ideas in the various sectors and help them take the first steps in realizing them. We looked at the technology companies that made it to the final to discover the new innovation coming from Denmark in 2011.

The winning team in software category was a group of four students from Copenhagen (Rasmus Jørgensen, David Wind, Tim Garbos and Helge Munk) with a micropayment solution tool for software developers - Fundr. The idea is to build a portal where users can request a software built specifically for their needs and reward the developers with a donation once the software is ready. The start-up is at such an early-stage that there is virtually no information on the internet about it. Hopefully, we would hear more about Fundr once the portal is created. Graduateland, a career and education portal we covered recently, got the people's choice award in the same category. The start-up has been operating for some months now and has already attracted a lot of users across Europe.

The winner in the services category was a Danish-German team behind CallCab - a start-up that aims to improve the efficiency of taxi industry. By contacting CallCab call center or using their phone application, users could order the nearest and cheapest taxi without knowing their exact address or remembering any taxi service's phone numbers. CallCab will soon be launched in Germany and in the future the start-up will look for possible cooperation with the railway industry.

Dane Reign, women's fashion for rainy weather, won the applied technology category. Emma Jorn and Carla Kai, the team being Dane Reign, have set out to create cool outdoor gear for female cyclists.

Denmark is perhaps the Nordic country that enjoys the highest number of companies applying to Venture Cup each year. The competition takes place in other Nordic countries too, but it somehow hasn't taken off quite as it has in Denmark.

For more information about the winners in cleantech and lifesciences categories, check out this page.