Cypriot fintech team wins Bank of Greece Datathon

Three executives from Cypriot fintech Ask WiRE have clinched the first prize in the Bank of Greece Datathon 2023, which was the first National Open Data Application Competition.

Terpsi Mitsi, Marios Pitsiali, and Zacharias Andreou emerged as winners with their UpGreen project, which was developed during the two-day competition held on April 22-23, 2023.

The Bank of Greece, in collaboration with the Open Technologies Alliance (GFOSS), organised the competition at Innovathens, with participants coming mainly from universities, the Greek startup community, and independent professionals.

The competition aimed to encourage participants to create innovative applications that offer solutions to enhance value and promote digital transformation in crucial sectors of the economy and society.

Attendees presented their original designs and developments in the hopes of securing the top spot, with the winning team demonstrating exceptional innovation and problem-solving capabilities.

Priority was given to the areas of real estate market, tourism and banking and monetary analysis.

The executives of Ask Wire, a company that combines real estate expertise with the use of technology, developed and presented the UpGreen project. UpGreen can be a useful tool for banks, investment funds, energy companies and even governments to achieve their ESG objectives and goals.

UpGreen enables companies to identify and target potential customers to promote property energy upgrades. Using reliable sources of information and data mining, it analyses entire building blocks, identifies areas of property in need of energy upgrading, predicts its cost and performs value/square meter estimation to determine areas of “green” investment activity.

Banks, for example, can focus on areas with great prospects to significantly increase the efficiency and conversion rates of their lending programmes, contributing to a more sustainable future.

“This is a very important distinction that certifies, among other things, the professional excellence of the executives who work for our company. Terpsi, Marios and Zacharias were called to work under pressure, having only two days to complete their task. This helped them to develop their time management and decision-making skills, as well as their ability to work as a team in fast-paced and tight schedules,” CEO of Ask WiRE Pavlos Loizou said.

“Another important experience gained by our employees was how to effectively communicate their ideas and present their results to the general public. Experience is essential for every professional in business. I would like to take this opportunity to once again congratulate the children on their success, which fills all of us at Ask Wire with pride,” Loizou concluded.