“Barcelona has triumphed over Madrid as Spain’s startup capital due to the deal circulation and the expertise,” explains Miquel Martí, Tech Barcelona’s CEO. “Worldwide expertise is attracted by the life-style, the energy of the ecosystem, and the presence of worldwide firms.”
In line with Barcelona & Catalonia Startup Hub—the area’s startup listing—there are over 1,900 startups in Catalonia, principally concentrated in Barcelona; since 2016, the quantity has grown by over 75 p.c. Town has lengthy had a powerful custom of health-tech startups fueled by college and regional authorities collaboration, however profitable founders have been funding, supporting, and beginning different firms, in addition to diversifying into development, mobility, and sustainability. There’s additionally been a gradual trickle of fintech firms from London, lured by post-Brexit border-free banking, good climate, a decrease price of residing—and the seashore.
011h’s Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva.{Photograph}: Gregori Civera
011h
Lucas Carné and José Manuel Villanueva offered Barcelona ecommerce website Privalia in 2016. In 2020, they each dedicated €2 million (roughly $1.97 million) to discovered this environmentally pleasant “passive home” startup, elevating a further €8 million in seed funding and, in July, €25 million in Sequence A funding with Redalpine, Aldea Ventures, and A/O Proptech. 011h builds prefabricated houses in its manufacturing facility utilizing wooden from managed forests to stay carbon impartial. “We’re bringing the manufacturing facility techniques from automotive to development to cut back prices and design buildings with low vitality necessities,” explains Carné. “Buildings are liable for 40 p.c of world CO2 emissions.” A mission with developer Renta Corporación lowered embodied carbon of the constructing by greater than 90 p.c in comparison with standard strategies, whereas development timelines had been lowered by 35 p.c. 011h’s Fioresta improvement in Alicante started development in July 2022, and the corporate is creating a digital platform to run the design and constructing course of. World enlargement will comply with subsequent 12 months. 011h.com
acceXible
“We name it maths-based linguistic medication,” says Carla Zaldua, cofounder and CEO of acceXible. The corporate’s automated speech evaluation captures a affected person’s voice—anyplace from the physician’s workplace to over a landline—and makes use of AI to research their speech patterns and detect the early indicators of dementia, Parkinson’s, and even coronary illness from tone, pauses, repetition, and sentiment evaluation through so-called vocal biomarkers. Based in 2017, acceXible has raised €1.4 million, supported within the early levels by grants, plus $959,000 in seed funding in 2021. acceXible detects dementia with an accuracy fee of over 91 p.c, has a brand new funding spherical on the finish of 2022, and is increasing internationally. The corporate is testing the service with the UK Nationwide Well being Service in rural Cornwall, the place it’s onerous for older folks to succeed in medical doctors, and it’s prototyping a 60-second voice take a look at to detect the indicators of despair and nervousness in Colombia, Spain, the UK, and the US. accexible.com
Doctomatic’s Carmen Rios and Frederic Llordachs.{Photograph}: Gregori Civera
Doctomatic
Frederic Llordachs calls himself the “grandpa of digital well being in Spain.” He created doctor search app Doctoralia in 2007, then Doctomatic final June with Carmen Rios, securing €415,000 in seed funding from Encomenda Good Capital & Ship2B Ventures. It’s a distant patient-monitoring app which, utilizing any medical machine from heart-rate screens to scales, permits medical doctors to examine in on sufferers with power illness. Onscreen prompts help topics in taking their measurements, whereas medical doctors obtain alerts if outcomes are absent or irregular. The information is fed into Doctomatic’s predictive AI, which helps medical doctors determine whether or not a affected person’s situation is deteriorating. There are some 5 billion sufferers affected by power illness worldwide, and Llordachs notes that Covid has made it tougher for these sufferers to attend surgical procedures. European international locations are additionally dealing with a scarcity of well being care staff. “We’re in well being care, so we don’t wish to disrupt. We wish to enhance,” he explains. doctomatic.com
VOTTUN
VOTTUN is “the WordPress for Web3, promoting shovels for the blockchain gold rush,” says Marta Valles, who cofounded the platform with CEO Luis Carbajo, Amazon’s former Spanish director, in 2018. To assist firms hint and certify knowledge utilizing blockchain know-how, VOTTUN presents “templates”—ready-to-use blockchain merchandise that permit firms like Nestlé, Estrella Damm, and the World Financial institution, amongst others, to hint knowledge, certify identification, handle crypto funds, and launch NFTs. VOTTUN acquired authorities help for its R&D stage in 2020 and 2021, then raised €1.1 million in two seed rounds from the likes of the Draper Enterprise Community, Lanzame Capital, and the American fund Proteum X, with plans for a €20 million preliminary coin providing on the finish of 2022. The corporate broke even in 2021, and is in revenue in 2022. The following step is enlargement into the US and Mexico, Valles predicts. vottun.com
Nuclia
“Nuclia makes the unsearchable searchable,” says CEO Eudald Camprubí. With CTO Ramon Navarro Bosch, he’s constructed an AI-powered search engine that may index knowledge from any doc kind and transcribe movies in any language. Corporations possess and retailer extra unstructured knowledge than they know what to do with—“unstructured knowledge in a number of totally different knowledge sources,” as Camprubí places it. Nuclia’s semantic search indexes every little thing on-line in a specifically created database in order that when a person makes a search question, Nuclia presents related paragraphs and particular moments from audio and video recordings, all based mostly on key phrases and semantic that means. Based in 2019, Nuclia noticed a seed spherical in April, led by Crane.vc and Elaia, of €5 million, which the corporate will use to focus on builders. nuclia.com
Lupa
Combining the second oldest human exercise (operating) with one of many latest (deeptech), Lupa combines audio teaching, wearables, GPS maps, and sightseeing to take runners on new routes, explaining native landmarks in addition to providing operating ideas and suggestions on their physiology. There’s additionally a social aspect to the app—Lupa hosts weekly run golf equipment, and its Sweat and Smile podcast goals to construct a neighborhood really feel. The cell app firm was based in 2020 by Stefano Lorini, a Salomon-sponsored mountain runner and former program lead at Google for Startups, and his cofounder, CTO and operating companion Sergi Porta. lupa.run
HUBUC
Hubuc’s platform permits any firm to embed monetary providers in its product: providers like issuing cost playing cards, controlling FX charges, and organizing buyer funds. CEO Hasan Nawaz and COO Ignacio Javierre labored on pivot after pivot earlier than launching HUBUC in Could 2020. Their single API can embed monetary providers—financial institution accounts, funds, FX charges—into enterprise choices. HUBUC sits between monetary companions and the corporate’s product, managing contracts and regulatory necessities. February’s seed spherical raised $10 million from DreamWorks founder Jeffrey Katzenberg’s WndrCo, and Runa Capital. “Use has grown exponentially, with the variety of card transactions rising by 1,600 for the reason that starting of the 12 months,” Javierre explains. hubuc.com
Final.app
Because the world began ordering meals by app, who supported the meals suppliers? Final.app is a B2B on-demand courier service for the restaurant trade, based in 2019 by two brothers, each former Glovo staff, to serve hospitality companies, eating places, and ghost kitchens. Native entrepreneur and CEO Eric Nikolic noticed that “know-how has made issues tougher, not much less, for eating places,” he explains. To date the corporate has offers with native chains together with PadThaiWok, Tony Roma’s, Carl’s Jr., and Miss Sushi. January’s €2.5 million funding spherical, led by All Iron Ventures, a Spanish financier, with help from Bynd, is aimed toward driving worldwide enlargement over 2022 for the at the moment Spanish language-only app. last.app
Vitaance
“Insurance coverage just isn’t a sector that’s demonstrated a lot innovation to date,” says Ana Zamora, long-serving insurance coverage professional and now founding CEO of Vitaance. “It ought to contribute to lives, not simply cowl disasters.” Working to beat client perceptions that insurance coverage is boring, Vitaance gamifies monetary, social, psychological, and bodily enhancements for a corporation’s staff by providing rewards for people and groups that hit wholesome bodily, emotional, and monetary objectives. The Catalan firm closed 2021 with a €3 million pre-seed funding spherical from SoftBank, Kindred Ventures, and Astorya, amongst others, to fund a analysis and innovation lab and increase worker advantages. vitaance.com
Payflow
Payflow shares Catalonia’s respect for civil society. The startup sells a salary-advance service to employers, charging firms a fee if employees withdraw a portion of their wage early, slightly than charging employees, as rival providers do. “We’re offering a real worker profit for blue-collar staff and can by no means cost staff,” says Benoît Menardo, who cofounded the corporate in 2020 with Avinash Sukhwani. Amongst customers it has a 40 p.c common obtain fee, which peaks at 90 p.c for a few of its purchasers. Since its 2020 launch it has raised €12 million, with an €8 million spherical in January that included Spain’s VC Seaya Ventures, Cathay Innovation, Y Combinator, and Steve Huffman’s Insurgent Fund to transition to a neobank. payflow.io
