Coinscrap, the startup that allows its users to save by rounding up their transactions, has won the first edition of the El Referente magazine awards 2019. José Torrego, director of the publication, assured during the award ceremony that these awards were a “necessary for the ecosystem and that El Referente had the obligation to organize them”. Also stars of the event were Alen Space, a Galician startup that came second and WOOM Fertility, the Madrid startup came in third place.
During the awards, sponsored by BStartup, ECIJA Abogados, Deloitte and the Xunta de Galicia, El Referente also announced the publication of the Ranking of the 100 most innovative startups in Spain 2019, compiled in a free report that can be downloaded from the StartupsReal online platform, in the reports section. For the preparation of the report, the magazine contacted more than 200 agents of the Spanish innovation ecosystem that proposed three seed and early stage reference startups.
A total of 600 candidate startups were obtained, filtering those companies that met the requirements of the awards: companies to be incorporated in the last 3 years, that were founded by at least one Spanish entrepreneur, that had a clear innovative component and that had not obtained more than one million Euro of investment at the pre-selection date.
THE EVENT
From a list of more than 600 selected startups, the El Referente magazine team pre-selected 180 based on the aforementioned criteria. At that time, a jury of eight analysts ranked the 100 most innovative startups and published them in the report. The jury was made up of well-known investment funds and companies in the sector such as K-Fund, Swanlaab, Telefónica Ventures, Startupxplore, BStartup, ECIJA Abogados, Deloitte and TheVentureCity.
During the event, directed by José Torrego, director and founder of El Referente, the ten finalists gave a 3-minute pitch to the investment community. The finalists were Allread, Alén Space, Consetio, Coinscrap, Dixper, Foods For Tomorrow, Tracer, Woom and Zeleros, communicating the winners at the end of the event held at the Impact Hub Madrid in calle Gobernador 26.
There was also time for Torrego to talk with Laura González Estéfani, Yolanda Pérez, Carlos Blanco and Miguel Vicente about investment in Spain, its evolution and its future.
THE TEN FINALISTS
Of all the 100 startups in the ranking, Barcelona was the city with the most companies in the top 100 (38), followed by Madrid (27) and the Region of Valencia (11). In addition, among the ten finalist startups Madrid and Barcelona managed to position three of their companies in the top 10 but the Autonomous Region that triumphed was Galicia as two of its companies came in first (Coinscrap) and second (Alen Space) place. The top ten companies are briefly explained below:
- Coinscrap: an application that allows you to round up transaction amounts paid with a card and automatically transfer the difference to a different savings account depending on the objective you want to achieve.
- Alén Space: an aerospace company that provides end-to-end solutions based on nano satellites, including design, manufacturing (including its own hardware and software), launch management and in-orbit operation.
- Woom Fertility: thanks to its algorithm, it calculates the daily probability of pregnancy taking into account information about the female’s cycle and the couple’s lifestyle and biometric parameters.
- Dixper: allows video game and e-sports players to increase their monetization by disruptively interacting with the audience and remotely connecting to a computer from a web browser to access the games located on it.
- Alias Robotics: the startup is led by Endika Gil, CSO and cofounder of the company. The Vitoria-based company specializing in the field of robotic cybersecurity allows analysis of the behavior of industrial robots, identifying malfunctions, external computer attacks or alterations to their blackbox, which controls the operation of these robotic devices.
- Heura/Foods For Tomorrow: created under the slogan “We are the generation that will stop using animals as intermediaries for meat”, the startup seeks to encourage a food habit based on a 100% sustainable menu.
- Allread: the technology company specializing in detecting and digitizing alphanumeric text in operating environments using its own image character recognition technology.
- Tracer: a ticketing platform that was born to put an end to the unauthorized resale of tickets for major events, giving rights holders the ability to decide if and at what price their tickets can be resold.
- Zeleros: Spanish company that develops hyperloop, already considered the fifth means of transport. Its focus on vehicle optimization allows for a reduction in infrastructure costs and safer working pressures for passengers.
- Consetio: The “Whatsapp of fruit and vegetables” has been created in order to make transactions of goods and services simpler and easier to manage on a day-to-day basis.
If you wish to download the report, which is completely free, you may do so at this link.