Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1456665
2 NEWS 3.3.2022 LEADING ride-hailing and technology company eCabs has appointed Luca Di Michele as its Chief Technology Officer. Di Michele has taken over the steward- ship of the Company's technology team and leading a growing multi-cultural team of software engineers from 13 nationali- ties, who are building and shaping eCabs' mobility technology platforms, together with a growing extended team composed of QA specialists, product specialists, business analysts and data analysts. is appointment follows the compa- ny's recent announcement of its corpo- rate restructuring exercise which saw the appointment of Andrew Bezzina as the new CEO for eCabs' local operations, and Matthew Bezzina as leader for global op- erations and CEO for Cuorium Technolo- gies, eCabs' Technology arm. Luca Di Michele joined eCabs in June of 2018 as a Senior Developer and in Sep- tember of 2019 he was appointed Head of Development, heading the team of devel- opers at the newly set up Cuorium Tech- nologies. "e company has been going through interesting phases of renewal and trans- formation over the past few years, and I feel privileged to have been an integral part in shaping this transformation. We have built an awesome team of profes- sionals here whom I am proud to have as colleagues, all of whom are drvien by the same passion to see their creations come to life, given the liberty to explore new technologies. We have exciting times ahead of us," Di Michele said. AI Virtual Agent specialist EBO has appointed Maria-Louiza Georgantzi as its Marketing Director in Athens, Greece. Georgantzi is an international busi- ness leader with over fifteen years of marketing, sales and business devel- opment experience across Western & Eastern European markets in in- dustries as diverse as technology and F&B retail. She has held senior leadership po- sitions at Sony Europe in both the Central & Eastern Europe Head- quarters as well as in Greece. In her role at PlayStation, she suc- cessfully managed Sony's high-pro- file business unit in Greece and moved on to transform the corpora- tion's challenging Central & Eastern Europe Digital Media Player division (20 countries) into a key region glob- ally. "Having Maria-Louiza on board as our new Marketing Director is a great asset for us at EBO as the com- pany grows and expands its opera- tions internationally," Dr Gege Gatt, CEO of EBO, said. Maria-Louiza holds a Bachelor's Honours degree in Economics from the University of Essex and a Mas- ter's Honours degree in Internation- al Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science. She is fluent in English, Greek and Spanish and has unparalleled posi- tive energy. eCabs appoints chief technology officer Former Sony marketing manager joins EBO THE team of CADChain, a Dutch deep tech startup, had been identified and in- vited by Malta Enterprise (ME) to con- tribute actively towards shaping Malta's start-up/scale-up ecosystem and start new highly innovative projects on the island. CADChain is creating innovative solutions at the intersection of intel- lectual property protection and indus- trial design data security, making sure that valuable CAD (Computer-Aided Design) files are safe while collabora- tion and sharing are possible, as well as developing products that can be imple- mented in the metaverse space. Headquartered in the province of Limburg, CADChain is currently beta testing one of its solutions for Autodesk Inventor and is engaged in a long-term R&D project in 3D printing with two other Dutch companies. Malta is going to be the home base for several upcoming projects. e first one, Secret.Kiwi, was born out of the need for the protection of various types of trade secrets (data like recipes, client lists, software code, etc. that can- not or should not be patented but have to be shared). e company discovered this need while talking to potential cus- tomers who desperately want their digi- tal valuable assets safe at all times. is way Secret.Kiwi deals with the protection of any trade secrets in any industry, while the requirements are rather different in each instance. Se- cret.Kiwi evaluates the overlap of con- fidential information without providing direct access to the information itself, which is a vital requirement for keeping a trade secret undisclosed. Another project, Fe/male Switch, is a social impact educational role-playing game for future female entrepreneurs that equips them with the skills required to launch a startup or work in one. is project is our way to contribute back to the entrepreneurial community for all the support that we have been receiving for years. Users are placed in a virtual startup village and get to play as a start- up founder, mentor or investor. With the help of a game master, they create a startup, get an office and gain startup experience. Taking their burn rate into account, they need to go through quests and earn enough tokens to move to the next level. All of their ex- perience and new skills are recorded in their portfolio and, therefore, have re- al-life value. e game helps aspiring entrepreneurs learn how to bootstrap their startup by mastering a lot of digital tools that post- pone (or even eliminate) the need for a technical co-founder or initial funding. Co-Founder of Prickly Bits, Violetta Shishkina said Malta Enterprise had provided an amazing opportunity to set up in Malta. "Not only has ME provided funding to relocate some of our team members to Malta (including, non-EU team mem- bers), but they are also indispensable when it comes to getting in touch with the right stakeholders and future part- ners," she said. "We are extremely grateful for their dedication and their continuous sup- port. We have felt welcome on the is- land from day one and we are confident that expanding to Malta will allow us to be even more resilient, innovative and diverse. We are extremely excited to be joining a booming ecosystem for start- ups and scaleups and are definitely go- ing to play our part in making it prosper.' Kurt Farrugia, CEO of Malta Enter- prise, said he was pleased to see that Prickly Bits would be setting up a new R&D base in Malta that will drive its scaling up efforts and launch new inno- vative projects. "e Secret.Kiwi project comple- ments other start-ups and scale-ups that ME has attracted in the sphere of data security during the last years. We look forward to seeing Prickly Bits es- tablishes itself as an active player in the local start-up ecosystem," he said. "As ME we believe strongly in the pro- motion of female entrepreneurship. e Fe/male Switch project will also con- tribute very positively locally." Dutch deep-tech startup opens Malta RDI base Maria-Louiza Georgantzi Luca Di Michele