Utopia, a project intended to reduce the response time to fires, was the winner of the third edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, the imagin initiative that supports young people who have enterprising ideas to protect the environment. Through this programme, imagin, the digital services and lifestyle platform backed by CaixaBank, offers training and tools to a generation of environmentally aware and entrepreneurially driven young people so they can develop projects that can have a positive impact on the planet.
The Utopia project is a computer programme that relies on artificial intelligence and computer vision to prevent, detect and evaluate ignition points of forest fires in order to react as quickly as possible. The goal of the project is to reduce response times and protect land ecosystems, in fulfilment of SDG 15. Utopia is the brainchild of three Industrial Electronics Engineering students from the Polytechnic University of Valencia: Cosmin Ionescu (22), Laura Sempere (22) and Pablo José Gómez (22).
After accepting the award, as a starting point to kick off the project development phase and create their minimum viable product (MVP), the Utopia team had the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley in July, supported by imagin. For two weeks, the creators of Utopia took part in a programme to incubate their project that included training in the prestigious universities of Stanford and Berkeley, and visits to the likes of Google and Meta. In addition, the winners participated in plethora of activities intended to both advance their project and their growth as a team, with a full schedule that also included a road trip to visit natural parks in California, Arizona and Nevada.
2,500 participants in the 3rd edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge
The winning project of the third edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge was selected from the more than 650 teams registered in the imaginPlanet Challenge, which this year featured over 2,500 young participants. In recent months, imagin offered all of them a specialised training programme through in-person and online sessions on sustainability and entrepreneurship, and provided them with tools and resources to bring their ideas to life.
Out of all the participants, imagin short-listed 10 teams. These teams then presented their projects to a panel of experts in June. The panel consised of professionals associated with leading companies in the field of sustainability, and members of the imagin team. The initiative also involved the community of imaginers, who voted for their favourite project via digital channels.
Following the development process that started in Silicon Valley, the team will present the Utopia project in September at a Demo Day with investors, business angels, accelerator platforms and leading organisations in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The project will also have the support of imagin in the acceleration phase to promote it and help it become an initiative that is able to have a positive impact on the planet.
imaginPlanet, a commitment to sustainability
The imaginPlanet Challenge is part of the set of sustainability-based products, services, contents, agreements and initiatives that imagin, through imaginPlanet, develops to have a positive impact on the planet and on society as a whole. Through imaginPlanet, initiatives are launched in support of social and environmental causes, both internal and promoted by individuals or organisations supported by imagin.
imagin's sustainability plan means that the entire business model and organisation are committed to a criteria of coherence, social and environmental commitment, transparency and innovation. As a result, these incentives for new customers are replacing the traditional reward for sustainability actions, such as reforestation, cleaning the oceans, or donations to worthwhile causes. Similarly, besides fostering awareness of sustainability among its users, imagin promotes the adoption of sustainable habits internally in its physical spaces and the involvement of its employees in social and environmental causes through programmes in partnership with leading organisations.
imagin's sustainability model has earned it a B Corp certification. This guarantees the company's compliance with the highest standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency and corporate responsibility to balance economic benefit with social purpose. imagin is the first mobile-only financial service platform to achieve this certification.
More than 4 million imaginers
imagin is a lifestyle platform promoted by CaixaBank that offers digital, financial and non-financial services that help its users, mainly young people under 30, with their daily lives and future projects. It currently has a community of 4.3 million users, a figure that is constantly growing thanks to the wide range of content and services – many of them free to access – and to how easy it is to sign up and associate products to varying degrees, something that, unlike traditional banks, does not necessarily involve registering as a financial customer.
In addition, the imagin application provides a range of financial products to cover the saving and financing needs of young people as they transition into adulthood and start to have their own income and their own lifestyle projects. In this regard, imagin is adhering to the characteristics that have turned it into the leading bank for young people: mobile only banking (the services are provided exclusively through the app, with no branches and no website, which solely fulfils an informative purpose), with no fees for the user and its own simple and clear language, especially suited to directly communicating with young people.
