With the vocation of recognizing innovative applications of knowledge and technological development, the VLC/STARTUP awards held its ninth edition last Thursday as a commitment of the FPCUV with the support of the University of Valencia and Banco Santander to promote innovative entrepreneurship initiatives. The seven award-winning companies belong to various productive areas, from metaverse and gamification in education, scientific dissemination and innovation in the textile industry to artificial intelligence applied to medical management, solar energy applied to housing, solutions with chemical sensors and biomarkers applied to various industries (agri-food, pharmaceutical, health, chemical), and data intelligence for private capital markets.
The top-rated projects in the Laboratory category were Opticalsens and Energy Blind, and in the Blue-Boost Dispatch category, the top-rated companies in the Seedbed category were Management and Improvement of Medical Consultations, Vardier Brand, José Luis Oltra (Cuarentaydos) and Hubalinno. The awards were presented by Rosa Donat, Vice Rector for Innovation and Transfer of the University of Valencia, José Miguel Lorente, Director of Institutions in the Regional Directorate of Valencia and Murcia of Banco Santander, and Pedro Carrasco, Director of the PCUV.
Communication and entrepreneurship, Juan Francisco Calero
The event was attended by the presentation of Juan Francisco Calero, mobility specialist and renowned youtuber: "We are in a powerful and dangerous society because some corporations can have more power than the states themselves and this has never happened before in history. It is a context of total disruption and that marks the vertigo in which we are. Spain is a tremendously arid country for entrepreneurship and that is why it is the most important time for collaborative environments such as the Science Park. Sweden has the best entrepreneurial ecosystem where precisely the people who are doing well invest in startups and their environment, and that is the model we have to follow. If we had that capacity of the investment system, the situation in Spain would be very different", said the communicator during his dissertation.
"Many times success and failure depend on the ability to adapt to changes and we always find opportunities that we never imagined. The great lesson to be learned is that you have to forget about the final goal and assume that you will reach another point where there will be a greater probability of success," Calero concluded in his speech prior to the presentation of the VLC/STARTUP awards.
These are the awarded companies
Among the advantages for the beneficiary companies offered by this program are the possibility of physically setting up at the PCUV, access to scientific and business support services offered by the FPCUV and the UV, participation in a specific training program aimed at entrepreneurs, and receiving an economic endowment.
The awards have three categories. The Seedbed category includes a cash prize of 1,000 euros for each winning project and up to four coworking spaces at the Science Park for twelve months. In the Laboratory category, one project may receive an endowment of 3,500 euros and two others 2,000 euros, in addition to laboratory space for one year. As for the Dispatch category, the project will receive 3,000 euros and free office space for twelve months at the PCUV.
Blue-Boost, company awarded in the Dispatch category
A market intelligence company conceived to replicate the real economy with the objective of identifying high-growth structural trends, Blue-Boost, and its commercial brand Latency, has been awarded in the Dispatch mode. "Our focus is the private markets, where unlisted companies account for more than 99% of the country's business fabric. The information in the private markets is opaque and of low decalage. It is paradoxical that between the last annual accounts presented by companies at the present time, more than 18 months may elapse, which makes it very difficult to predict their future. Our core is data, where we are more than 30 professionals applying AI in a transversal way from its origin, through the collection of unstructured data to applying intelligence on top of it with different families of algorithms such as clustering, machine, forecast and, in short, with an application that I would call the financial analyst at your service", explains Raúl Díaz, technology director and co-founder of Latency.
Opticalsens, company awarded in the Laboratory category
Opticalsens, commercially known by the name Celentis, winner in the Laboratory category, is the first spin off of the University of Valencia and the Universitat Politècnica de València, which also brings together researchers from the Interuniversity Institute for Molecular Recognition Research and Technological Development (IDM) who have managed to develop product lines such as probes for detecting drugs of abuse in drinks, the so-called submission drugs. "We are able to detect very quickly and efficiently the presence of any type of drug in a beverage. And on the other hand, we have also developed senescence probes, a huge breakthrough when it comes to working in the anti-aging line in cellular senescence. The main feature of this development is to have implemented a probe that allows us to analyze the senescence of the same individual during different phases of the application, both of drugs and of the disease, since it does not require the use of a laboratory animal and has great advantages over other types of technology. These are chemosensors capable of changing color when detecting the presence of substances that can be of great interest in their detection," describes Luis Morró, CEO of the company.
Energy Blind, company awarded in the Laboratory category
Bringing solar energy to the city in an integrated way through photovoltaic blinds is the goal of Energy Blind, with the Enerlind trademark, awarded with the Laboratory modality. "The idea is that the windows we have in our apartments, while we are not at home, can bring energy to the apartment in an integrated and free way. We focus a lot on research, and we are developing other products with integrated batteries and other management systems that support self-consumption in the apartments, at a time when regulations are becoming stricter, even for new construction. Soon we will have to be emission-neutral and we intend to provide a solution to this challenge," says Guillermo López, co-founder and CEO of Enerlind.
Management and Improvement of Medical Consultations, company awarded in the Seedbed modality
"We have developed a platform through which, with artificial intelligence algorithms, we try to improve the efficiency of the process of a medical consultation, allowing the screening of patients, reducing complementary problems and trying to streamline or reduce all consultation times aimed at being able to spend more time in the consultation with the patient. We are at the stage of having a minimum viable product and we are starting to implement it in some private clinics", explains Alberto Montalbán, co-founder of Management and Improvement of Medical Consultations, winner in the Seedbed category.
Vardier Brand, company awarded in the Seedbed modality
Just in case" fashion firm Vardier Brand, winner of the award in the Seedling category, makes women's foldable garments that take up almost no space. "They fold to the size of a cell phone, are very light and travel in a woman's purse. Always for any unforeseen event and just in case. The concept is that you can pack your travel bag in a handbag and always be prepared for everyday life. In Vardier we design all our garments in Spain and we also manufacture everything in the Valencian Community. In this way, we also collaborate to the development of our country and the textile industry in Spain. We specialize in innovative design, in working with technical fabrics that do not wrinkle and we also work on continuous innovation. All that part of design and product. At Vardier we are a 100% online store, we were born as e-commerce and we sell all our products around the world, directly from Valencia through our online store," describes Arturo Gómez-Lechón, co-founder of Vardier.
José Luis Oltra (Cuarentaydos), company awarded in the Seedbed modality
"We live in a world completely dependent on science and technology in which the people, the citizens, understand nothing about science and technology. And if we don't solve it, it could be expensive. And I'm not saying it myself, Carl Sagan said it. Science that is not told is not science and that is why I have been bringing science to the general public since 2016, first in the form of videos and conferences and then in the form of monologues, books, articles, workshops for children, podcasts and radio. Today's great global challenges are scientific in nature. Pandemics, climate change, the development of AI have been and will be challenges humanity has never faced before. But hey, you and I aren't going to save the world. Do you need to improve your social media presence? Do you need to create some audiovisual content for scientific dissemination? Here I am. Cuarentaydos translates science into everyday language in any format," says José Luis Oltra, whose company won the Seedbed category.
Hubalinno, company awarded in the Seedbed modality
Hubalinno, winner in the Seedbed category, is a gamified metaverse that digitally transforms education and training with all its benefits. "Along with the educational part, the goal is to have the student much more motivated, more focused, with the focus on those contents we want them to learn and, above all, to have that immersive experience that makes it much more attractive for them to learn. We also see that there are business processes that are becoming more and more gamified, a line in which we are also betting on a business diversification that allows us to take that playful and competitive part, that part in which you learn how you advance step by step to both an educational and business environment," says Ernesto Doménech, CEO and founder of Hubalinno.
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