04 May Minerva celebrates its 2nd Investor Day with more than one hundred attendees from the investment world
The Minerva Program, a reference in business acceleration in Andalusia, promoted by the Ministry of Economic Transformation, Industry, Knowledge and Universities, together with Vodafone, has held its second virtual investment forum, the so-called `Minerva Investor Day´, with more than one hundred attendees including leading national investment funds, as well as international investment profiles and business angels.
The success of this second Minerva meeting with the investment ecosystem, has illustrated that, despite the negative impact of COVID19 on the business fabric of our country, there is still a commitment to the startup model. “Funds have not stopped investing, indeed now they are looking with greater interest for digital business models, capable of surviving and adapting easily in case of another pandemic like the one we are experiencing right now, and have also focused on solutions that transform traditional sectors, such as education or health”, explains Gracia Catalina, director of Minerva, who considers it essential to continue supporting this type of events to connect the investor ecosystem with companies that need to inject capital in order to grow in the market.
The forum, which lasted approximately two hours, was held in virtual format and included the participation of eight high-potential technology companies, which has the opportunity to present their business models in a five-minute elevator pitch format.
These eight Andalusian companies under the Minerva seal, have currently an open investment round, which will allow them to continue growing and expanding their market even outside the Spanish frontiers. Such is the case of Wuolah, a university-platform where students from high school as well as from Universities, can download notes and also receive financial compensation for their sharing. With more than 600,000 active users, they want to make the leap to Latin America; and Chekin, a reference solution for the `check-in´ of any type of tourist accommodation, is already present in more than 20 countries and used in 15,000 properties around the world.
In this occasion, the biotechnological sector was also present with two highly innovative proposals. G2G Algae, an R+D+i company that proposes the cultivation of microalgae as a tool for multiple applications such as food, cosmetics or agriculture, highlighting the purifying and regenerating power of these plants; and Cultiply, which has developed a technology capable of multiplying the microorganisms present in yeasts in order to save costs in the agri-food industry.
They have also presented Nubentos, a web platform that simplifies integrations between different software in the health sector by performing a single management with a marketplace of APIs that have already been used by more than 1,800 users; and Vestigia, which is a blockchain-based solution that allows to protect the security identity of products to prevent counterfeiting by tracing form its manufacture or origin to its purchase by a customer.
In this virtual investment forum, there were also startups seeking investment rounds with the aim of consolidating their business models in the edtech sector launched in 2020 such as BrainsPro, an integrated SaaS e-learning solution for the creation of virtual academies; and Liceo de Farmacia, an online platform for continuous learning specialized in the pharmacy sector to improve customers services and consultative selling.
This second investor forum was preceded by a first event in June 2020, which was very well received and attended by more than 60 investment profiles. With these initiatives, the Minerva Program aims to become the benchmark in business acceleration for startups investors.
