The two founders of Boreal Light come from two countries that were once at war with each other. Together, they are changing the world from Berlin. Ali Al-Hakim was born in Iraq and moved to Germany, where he completed his engineering training. Hamed Beheshti comes from Iran and has lived in China, Malaysia, Kenya and Lebanon. They met in 2012, when Hamed Beheshti was writing his doctoral thesis and Ali Al-Hakim was employed by a company. The idea of founding their own company matured together.
At some point, they came up with the idea of operating water treatment plants with solar power. They wanted to construct something that would also work sustainably in African villages without a power connection — and that could also be financed there, says Al-Hakim. When the drinking water supply in the Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv collapsed as a result of the Russian war against Ukraine, the two founders realised that the technology, which had actually been developed for the Global South, was also ideally suited to guaranteeing the drinking water supply in Europe during crisis situations.
To this end, the startup joined the PHINEO Startups Accelerator and has since delivered five systems to the city of Mykolaiv, where they supply 500,000 inhabitants with clean water. During the program we defined milestones, especially focussing on their Ukraine project, and worked on their impact strategy with the team. We placed the team of Boreal Light at various events for them to amplify their reach, such as the Greentech Festival, Café Kyiv 2024 and a networking event on social innovation and social entrepreneurship in Ukraine by Ukraine Social Venture Fund, GIZ and Fraunhofer. As Hamed has founded Boreal based on this research, we also invited him to share his experience with the research-based founding process with other researchers to spark the idea of starting a business in the science and research sector. Right now, Boreal Light is looking for 180,000€ to 350,000€ project funding for new water desalination plants in Ukraine.
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