“Barcelona won Miquel Martí, CEO of Tech Barcelona, explains Madrid as Spain’s startup capital because of the flow of deals and talent. “International talent is attracted by the lifestyle, the strength of the ecosystem and the presence of international companies.”
According to Barcelona & Catalonia Startup Hub — the region’s directory of startups — there are more than 1,900 startups in Catalonia, mainly concentrated in Barcelona; Since 2016, the number has increased by more than 75 percent. The city has long had a strong tradition of health tech startups fueled by regional government and university partnerships, but successful founders have funded, supported funding and founding other companies, as well as diversifying into construction, mobility and sustainability. There is also a slow proliferation of fintech companies from London, attracted by post-Brexit borderless banking, good weather, a lower cost of living – and the beach.
011h by Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva.Photo: Gregori Civera
011 hours
Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva sold Barcelona’s e-commerce site Privalia in 2016. In 2020, both committed 2 million euros (about 1.97 million dollars) to start up the startup. This eco-friendly passive home” raised an additional €8 million in seed funding and, in July, €25 million in Series A funding with Redalpine, Aldea Ventures and A/O Proptech. 011h builds prefabricated homes in his factory using wood from managed forests to be carbon neutral. “We are taking factory systems from automobile to building to reduce costs and design buildings with low energy requirements,” explains Carné. “Buildings are responsible for 40% of global CO22 emissions. “A project with developer Renta Corporación reduced the carbon footprint in the building by more than 90% compared with conventional methods, while construction progress was reduced by 35%. Construction of 011h’s Fioresta in Alicante began in July 2022, and the company is developing a digital platform to run the design and construction process. The global expansion will follow next year. 011h.com
acceXible
“We call it math-based linguistic medicine,” said Carla Zaldua, co-founder and CEO of acceXible. The company’s automated speech analysis captures a patient’s voice — anywhere from a doctor’s office to a landline phone — and uses AI to analyze their voice patterns and detect signatures. Early signs of dementia, Parkinson’s and even coronary disease from tone, pause, repetition and sentiment analysis through so-called voice biomarkers. Founded in 2017, acceXible has raised 1.4 million euros, backed by early-stage grants, plus $959,000 in seed funding in 2021. acceXible detects dementia remember with an accuracy rate of more than 91 percent, has a new funding round by the end of 2022, and is expanding internationally. The company is testing the service with the UK’s National Health Service in rural Cornwall, where it’s hard for older people to reach doctors, and it’s prototyping a 60-second voice test to detect signs depression and anxiety in Colombia, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. accexible.com
Carmen Rios and Frederic Llordachs of Doctomatic.Photo: Gregori Civera
Doctomatics
Frederic Llordachs calls himself “the ancestor of digital health in Spain”. He created the doctor finder app Doctoralia in 2007, then Doctomatic last June with Carmen Rios, earning €415,000 in seed funding from Encomenda Smart Capital & Ship2B Ventures. It’s a remote patient monitoring app that uses any medical device from heart rate monitors to scales, allowing doctors to check on patients with chronic diseases. On-screen prompts assist subjects in taking their measurements, while physicians receive notifications if results are absent or abnormal. The data is fed into Doctomatic’s predictive AI, which helps doctors determine whether a patient’s condition is worsening. There are around 5 billion chronically ill patients worldwide, and Llordachs notes that Covid has made it harder for those patients to get into surgery. European countries are also facing a shortage of healthcare workers. “We’re taking care of health, so we don’t want to interrupt. We want to improve,” he explains. doctomatic.com
VOTTUN
VOTTUN is “WordPress for Web3, selling a shovel for the blockchain gold rush,” said Marta Valles, who co-founded the platform with CEO Luis Carbajo, a former Spanish executive at Amazon, in 2018. To help developers A blockchain data validation and tracking company, VOTTUN says it offers “templates”—used blockchain products for companies like Nestlé, Estrella Damm, and the World Bank, among others. other companies, track data, confirm identities, manage crypto payments, and launch NFTs. VOTTUN received government support for its R&D phase in 2020 and 2021, then raised 1.1 million euros in two seed rounds from Draper Venture Network, Lanzame Capital and US fund Proteum X . vottun.com
Nuclia
CEO Eudald Camprubí said: “Nuclia makes the unsearchable searchable. With CTO Ramon Navarro Bosch, he built an AI-powered search engine that can index data from any type of document and transcribe video in any language. Companies own and store more unstructured data than they know what to do with— “unstructured data in a variety of data sources” as Camprubí put it. Nuclia’s Semantic Search indexes everything online in a specially created database so that when a user performs a search query, Nuclia provides relevant passages and specific moments from different sites. audio and video recordings, all based on keywords and semantic meanings. Founded in 2019, Nuclia saw a seed round in April, led by Crane.vc and Elaia, worth €5 million, which the company will use to target developers develop. nuclia.com
Lupa
Combining the second oldest human activity (running) with one of the latest technologies (deeptech), Lupa combines audio coaching, wearables, GPS maps and tours to take runners on new routes, explaining local landmarks, and providing running tips and physiology feedback. The app also has a social element — Lupa organizes weekly running clubs and Sweat and smiles podcasts aim to build a sense of community. The mobile app company was founded in 2020 by Stefano Lorini, a Salomon-sponsored mountaineer and former host at Google for Startups, and co-founder, CTO and operating partner Sergi Porta. lupa.run
HUBUC
Hubuc’s platform allows any company to embed financial services in its products: services such as issuing payment cards, controlling exchange rates and organizing customer payments. CEO Hasan Nawaz and COO Ignacio Javierre worked on the pivot after the swing before launching HUBUC in May 2020. Their single API can embed financial services — bank accounts, payments , exchange rates — on business services. HUBUC sits between the company’s financial and product partners, managing contracts and regulatory requirements. The seed round in February raised $10 million from DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo and Runa Capital. “Usage has grown exponentially, with card transactions up 1,600 since the start of the year,” explains Javierre. hubuc.com
Last.app
When the world started ordering food with apps, who supported the caterers? Last.app is a B2B on-demand delivery service for the restaurant industry, founded in 2019 by two brothers, both former Glovo employees, to serve the hotel and restaurant businesses. and ghost kitchen. “Technology has made things more difficult, not less, for restaurants,” he explains. So far, the company has had deals with local chains including PadThaiWok, Tony Roma’s, Carl’s Jr. and Miss Sushi. A €2.5 million funding round in January, led by All Iron Ventures, a Spanish financier, with support from Bynd, aims to drive international expansion in 2022 for the app Currently only in Spanish. last.app
Vitaance
“Insurance is not an area that has demonstrated much innovation to date,” said Ana Zamora, longtime insurance expert and now founding CEO of Vitaance. “It will contribute to life, not just to cover up disasters.” Working to overcome the consumer perception that insurance is boring, Vitaance bets on financial, social, mental and physical improvements to its employees by offering rewards to employees. individuals and teams achieve physical, emotional, and financial wellness goals. The Catalan company ended 2021 with a pre-seed funding round of €3 million from SoftBank, Kindred Ventures and Astorya, among others, to fund a research and innovation lab as well as opening Extend benefits to employees. vitaance.com
Payflow
Payflow shares Catalonia’s respect for civil society. The startup sells a payroll advance service to employers, charging companies a commission if employees withdraw part of their pay early, instead of charging employees a fee, as rival services do. do. “We are providing real employee benefits to blue-collar workers and will never charge employees,” said Benoît Menardo, who co-founded the company in 2020 with Avinash Sukhwani. Among users, it has an average download rate of 40%, peaking at 90% for some of its customers. Since its launch in 2020, it has raised €12 million, with a €8 million round in January including Spain’s VC Seaya Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Y Combinator and Steve Huffman’s Rebel Fund to convert to a new bank. payflow.io
