- The 18 winners of the competition will join the 42 already selected during the other 2 Calls and embark on a 6 month Acceleration program.
- IMPACT is financing and accelerating 60 European startups for a total of 6 million Euro.
- Winners are coming from 5 different European countries: UK, Spain, Italy, Germany and Estonia.
- The selected startups will receive 1.8 million Euro, 100,000 Euro each.
Milan/Madrid – Third and last IMPACT Open Call successfully completed: 18 additional startups have been selected to start in January the IMPACT Acceleration program and will be receiving fundings for a total of 1.8 million Euro (100,000 Euro per Project articulated as 90,000 Euro in funding and 10,000 Euro in services to be implemented through a 6 month specialized mentoring and training program).
The selection has been done by 11 evaluators from all over Europe who chose the winners of the competition among 57 projects that participated to the Jury Day on Dec 9th and 10th in Madrid.
The 18 teams will join the 42 already selected during the other 2 Calls and will commence the 6 month specialized mentoring program held by the EU accelerator IMPACT composed by Buongiorno (via its accelerator b-ventures) ISDI, Seaya Ventures and Teknologiudviking ApS. IMPACT Acceleration Program kick-off was a Welcome Week taking place in Madrid on January 12th, 2016.
The 6 month acceleration process consists of mentoring and training with key digital ecosystem experts and entrepreneurs. The Mentoring Plan involves ‘Follow-up mentors’ (intended to follow continuously the team throughout the duration of the acceleration program) and ‘Specialized mentors’ (specialists in different strategic areas such as entrepreneurship, technology, marketing and financing).
The training plan includes:
- a face-to-face program on entrepreneurial digital acceleration which will cover the development of start-ups, digital marketing, technology and financing, all of that focused on the mobile environment;
- e-learning courses about specific digital tools & capabilities necessary for the development of the companies.
These 18 applications come from a total of 971 candidates, translated into 560 applications received from 29 countries. Only 57 were selected to pitch in front of IMPACT Selection Committee at Madrid Jury Day on 9 and 10 December, 2015.
A large majority of the 57 mobile internet projects were of an outstanding level in terms of the quality of the team (mastery, skills, fluency) and the worth and attractiveness of the business ideas behind. An important criteria in the selection process was that teams had already developed prototypes using selected components of the FIWARE European digital technologies.
Each of the 18 selected participants for the 3rd Open Call IMPACT Acceleration program receives an initial injection of up to 100,000 Euro, without equity consideration. Funding is disbursed in three installments linked to the attainment of pre-defined business milestones over the 6 month period. Additionally, IMPACT will offer an Extended Investments Phase to the most outstanding projects after the 6-month Acceleration Process, consisting in fast track access to a network of international private investor and also to the IMPACT Partners investment programs.
IMPACT selected startups come from all Europe: 9 have been selected from Spain, 5 from Italy, 1 from Germany, 2 from Estonia and 1 from The UK.
Name |
Country |
Tagline |
Agora Voting |
Spain |
Secure digital elections with open source software. |
Albert |
United Kingdom |
The super-simple financial assistant for the self-employed on their mobile. |
Antlos |
Italy |
Antlos is a peer-to-peer marketplace offering skippered boat holiday experiences. |
Bugfender |
Germany |
Protect your app against bugs, low ratings and bad user reviews |
Easy Stay |
Spain |
Easy Stay provides hospitality solutions through an innovative app that gives the user access to all of the hotels’ products and services |
eVeryride |
Italy |
eVeryride is the aggregator of all carsharing, bikesharing and scooter sharing services. |
Gloveone |
Spain |
Touch and Feel Virtual Reality with your own hands |
IMPACT results:
IMPACT accelerator is consolidating an acceleration process based on transparency and high performance which has been satisfactorily evaluated by the Startups. The training program has been evaluated with 8,2 points out to 10, and the Mentoring Program 9,4 out to 10 and, in general, IMPACT has gotten a Net Promoter Score of 84% which means that more than 80% of startups participating are really satisfied with IMPACT. Few positive results of IMPACT’s startups are:
- 8Fit has closed a round of 2,5 million Euro
- Wiffinity, was chosen by US Today as one of the top 10 startups worldwide in traveling
- Alpify was chosen by El Diario Expansion as one of the 50 best mobile apps in 2015
- Roberto Gomez, CEO INEVIO has just been elected by MIT as the best entrepreneur under the age of 35
In terms of Mentors IMPACT continuous to grow. Mentors committed to the first Open Call are: Steve Cadigan (ex VP LinkedIn), Mauro del Río (Buongiorno’s Founder), Inmaculada Martínez (London Business Cathalyst ambassador and Pread.ly CPO), Francois Derbaix (Indexa Capital and Ex Top Rural founder), Gustavo García Brusilovski (Klikin CEO and Buy VIP founder), Carina Szpilka (Partner at K Fund and Ex ING general Manager) or Didac Lee (F.C. Barcelona Advisory Board and Founder & CEO of Inspirit). Following are few mentor’s that belong to the second and third Open Call: Oscar Gallego (WW Direct at Hewlett Packard), Tony Raurich (EMEA Director at Booking.com), Javier Rodriguez Zapatero (Managing Director Spain & Portugal at Google), Arnaldo Muñoz (Managing Director Spain & Portugal at Airbnb) or Iñigo Onieva (ex VP of NH Hotels)
About IMPACT
IMPACT is one of the 16 projects supported by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union under FP7-2013-ICT-FI, to contribute to the promotion and early adoption of FIWARE technology, i.e. FIWARE generic enablers, specific enablers and/or domain specific platforms, by supporting projects focused on mobile technologies.
IMPACT is composed by Buongiorno, a world class Global Corporation in the mobile commerce ecosystem, ISDI, the world´s first “internet only” business school providing an internet business master’s degree integrated with a full start-up support ecosystem, Seaya Ventures, a venture capital company, and Teknologiudviking ApS, a consultancy firm specialized in funding and management of competitions.
About IMPACT Partners
Buongiorno Founded in 1999, Buongiorno is known as a world class leader in m-commerce for developing and managing payments and apps which enhance consumers’ satisfaction in the use of their mobile devices. Since July 2012, after a successful public offering acquisition, it now forms part of NTT DOCOMO, a Japan based global leader in mobile technologies and communications services.
With direct connection to more than 130 telecommunications operators in 25 countries and over 15 years’ experience in the mobile ecosystem, Buongiorno makes the mobile internet experience frictionless and exciting. Our mission is to delight digital users and create value in OverTheTop Services, Mobile Payments and Financial Services.
As a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT DOCOMO Buongiorno shares the same vision of becoming a true smart life partner for all our customers. b-ventures is the accelerator of Buongiorno, created a year ago with a current portfolio of 10 start-ups.
ISDI (Instituto Superior para el Desarrollo de Internet), is the first business school specialized in the digital field in Spain and Mexico, created by renowned directors of the main Internet companies and known for having the most complete and distinguished training in digital business (MIB, PADIB, DiBex, InternetAcademi, MDA, DiTex, Digital Tourism, International Digital Business Seminar at RCC at Harvard).
Its mission is to develop and promote the digital ecosystem through training and advice from professionals, entrepreneurs and companies to accelerate the shift to a new and more competitive and efficient economic model.
Seaya Ventures. Seaya Ventures is a venture capital fund founded in Madrid in 2013. The firm invests in companies pertaining to the digital sector in its initial stages or growing in Spain & Mexico. The objective of Seaya is investing in innovative companies which require capital increase to grow and to convert itself into sector leaders. Beatriz González and Michael Kleindl are its founding partners.
Teknologiudviking. Danish Consulting firm specialized in identifying public funding for the research and development of advanced technology projects and to facilitate potential partners of the start-ups as well as research centers so that they can undertake its global expansion. Well-experienced in online management and monitoring of open call public processes.
For more info:
TWITTER: @IMPACT_acc
FACEBOOK: /IMPACTAcc
WEBSITE:
impact-accelerator.com | www.fundingbox.com/p/impact-accelerator/