Seacliq, GlyCardial Diagnostics, Huub, Predictiva, Tracer and Feltwood have won the EmprendedorXXI Awards, promoted by CaixaBank through DayOne and co-awarded by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, through Enisa. DayOne is CaixaBank's specialised division for technology and innovation companies and their investors.
The award winners in each sector have won €25,000. All the winners and the two finalists of each category will gain access to an international mentoring programme in Silicon Valley organised by Esade in collaboration with the Singularity University, or to the Ignite Fast Track, an international course on business growth, by the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom). In addition, the winners of each sector will receive expert mentoring and support from the managers of CaixaBank's business areas that promote these awards in their respective categories: AgroBank, CaixaBank Digital Business, MicroBank and Comercia Global Payments. These prizes have been awarded as part of the innovation, technology and entrepreneurship event ‘DayOne Innovation Summit’, a new programme created by CaixaBank DayOne that has gathered the main players in the investment, technological and entrepreneurial ecosystem in several sessions throughout Spain. The last session, held in Madrid, closed this initiative's first edition and hosted the announcement of the EmprendedorXXI Award winners. The event was attended by Juan Antonio Alcaraz, CaixaBank's Chief Business Officer; Antoni Vila, MicroBank's Chairman; and Raúl Blanco, Secretary General for Industry and SMEs of the Spanish Goverment.
Juan Antonio Alcaraz highlighted the goals of these awards: “By means of the EmprendedorXXI Awards, we acknowledge the work carried out by these entrepreneurs, who help improve our entrepreneurial ecosystem. We want to award relevant innovation initiatives that help generate wealth.”
Acknowledgment to the most innovative companies
Six sectors that are linked to the new trends in innovation and to CaixaBank's business areas have been defined in this edition: Agro Tech, Health Tech, Commerce Tech, Fin&Insur Tech, Tourism Tech and Impact Tech. These awards bring technological companies closer to the Bank's different business areas.
The following companies showed the highest potential for growth in these scopes:
- Seacliq (Lisbon) received the Agro Tech award. It is a new electronics platform for the fish commercialization based on blockchain technology.
- GlyCardial Diagnostics (Barcelona) received the award in the Health Tech category. The company is a spin-off of the Institut de Recerca Sant Pau and CSIC which is working on the development of an in-vitro diagnosis (IVD) device for the early detection of cardiac ischemia and the prediction of the patients' evolution.
- The company with the greatest potential for growth in the Commerce Tech sector is Huub (in Maia – Portugal), an integrated logistics platform for the fashion industry.
- In the Fin&Insur Tech sector, the award went to Predictiva (Málaga), which has developed a superbot – using AI-based technology – specialised in the analysis and interpretation of spontaneous speech.
- Furthermore, Tracer (Madrid) won the award in the area of Tourism Tech. The company has created a blockchain-based system to avoid the problem of the extortionate resale of tickets for major musical and sporting events. Tracer was also the EntrepreneurXXI winner in the Community of Madrid (regional awards category).
- Feltwood (Zaragoza) took the award in the Impact Tech sector. It has developed an innovative process for transforming agricultural plant waste into ecological industrial material for multiple usages and with characteristics similar to materials such as plastic and wood.
BraiBook, which created an instant Braille document converter, won the prize for innovation awarded by the Israeli Embassy in Spain. This acknowledgement is awarded with a one-week training programme in Israel organised by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Academic Centre, in partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A total of 961 companies from Spain and Portugal have participated this year in the EmprendedorXXI Awards, considered one of the reference events for innovation projects in Spain and Portugal.
About CaixaBank
CaixaBank is the leader in retail banking in Spain, with a 29.3% share among individual customers. The bank headed by Chairman Jordi Gual, and led by CEO, Gonzalo Gortázar, has around 16 million customers in Spain and Portugal, with 5,000 branches, the largest commercial network in the Iberian Peninsula.
CaixaBank has been chosen as the best Spanish bank by some of the most prestigious specialised international publications. In fact, it has been named Best Bank in Spain in 2019 for the fifth consecutive year and Best Bank in Western Europe in 2019 for the first time by the US magazine Global Finance. In addition, it was awarded Bank of The Year in Spain 2018 by the British magazine The Banker (Financial Times Group). Euromoney also selected CaixaBank as Western Europe's Best Digital Bank in 2018 for the first time. Considered one of the world's most sustainable banks, CaixaBank is included on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.
About Enisa
The Empresa Nacional de Innovación (National Innovation Company) is a public company and a subsidiary unit of the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, through the Directorate-General of Industry and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises which, since 1982, has actively taken part in funding viable and innovative projects, championed by SMEs and entrepreneurs. Since its creation, Enisa has granted more than 5,900 loans for an amount of over €892 million.
