Marc Coloma from Heura, Andreu Dotti from InnovaMat and Sara Serantes from Freshperts are the three finalists who choose to take home the Young Entrepreneur Award organized by AIJEC, the Association of Young Entrepreneurs of Catalonia. In the category of Best Business Initiative, the three projects that choose to take the award that recognizes the most innovative business idea and with prospects for the future are HumanITcare, MEETOPTICS and Unik Sports Management.
This year’s awards are in their 27th edition and they do so in recognition of the work, effort and perseverance of young Catalan entrepreneurs in a particularly difficult year for the business community. The Young Entrepreneur Award ceremony will take place on October 29 and will be held in a gala without an audience that will be broadcast online to adapt to the exceptional situation caused by the coronavirus.
The finalists in the Young Entrepreneur Award
The Young Entrepreneur Award is considered one of the most important awards for entrepreneurship held in Catalonia. With this recognition, the Association of Young Entrepreneurs of Catalonia wants to distinguish the work, effort and perseverance of young entrepreneurs capable of generating jobs and promoting business projects.
Marc Coloma is the co-founder of Heura, the 100% vegetable meat startup founded in April 2017. Its mission is to create solutions that make the current food system obsolete and accelerate the transition to a world where animals are out of the equation. Its products are currently in more than 2,500 outlets and present in 9 countries around the world. The jury praised Heura’s revolution in the world of gastronomy, the application of technology in the food world and Coloma’s desire to change the world through its products.
Andreu Dotti decided in 2017 to end the fear of mathematics and promoted InnovaMat, a proposal that offers schools and teachers innovative content and strategies for teaching mathematics to children and adolescents. Through a digital platform, they bring together activities designed to meet the different learning needs of each child. Three years after its launch, 15% of Catalan schools have been set up and have begun to expand in Spain and internationally with four schools in Chile. More than 40,000 children follow his proposal and have a team of about seventy workers including engineers, mathematicians, teachers and illustrators. The jury has taken into account the revolution that the program has brought about in the teaching of mathematics in schools, the challenge of wanting to make changes in the way of teaching and the application of AI in such an everyday process as the learning.
Sara Serantes is the founder of Freshperts, the only multi-order delivery app in the industry that brings together all the group’s brands, Sushifresh, Boko, TakoTako, Fish & Greens and Rainbowls. Sara’s career began in 2012 when she was just 26 years old when she created Sushifresh in what was probably the first dark kitchen in the country. 8 years after launching the app, it has opened its first kitchen in Madrid, employs 80 people and expects to exceed 5 million euros. The jury valued Serantes ’business vision, passion and perseverance, the brand’s 100% digital DNA and its projection to continue to grow without losing in quality or essence.
Finalists Award for Best Business Initiative
The three finalists for the Best Business Initiative, with which the AIJEC rewards the project with the most creative and innovative business idea, are:
HumanITcare is a telemedicine company specializing in the remote monitoring of chronic patients through its artificial intelligence platform that allows remote monitoring of the data of chronic patients or those participating in clinical studies. The jury has taken into account the added value that a startup like HumanITcare brings to the healthcare world. He also praised the work done by the company set up by Nuria Pastor during the covid health crisis, offering the monitoring platform for chronic patients for free to discharge doctors from work.
MEETOPTICS makes it easy to build and innovate with photonics, the basis of the new technological age. With a highly specialized online search engine for laboratory materials and photonics technology, global photonics research and application makes it quick and easy to find, classify, filter, and compare between vendors around the world. The jury valued the projection of photonics as the technology of the 21st century and the leap made by Bárbara Buades, its creator, physicist and doctor of photonics, to move from research to entrepreneurship. MEETOPTICS is destined to become the world reference in its sector.
Unik Sports Management is a marketing and representation agency specializing in women’s football.
They are in charge of sports management as well as the image part of the players they represent and offer them legal and financial advice as well as academic training and advice so that the players can redirect their professional lives once they put on their boots. It is the only agency in the sector in Spain co-directed by a woman. The jury praised the business vision and specialization of the agency and its co-founder, Carlota Planas, for finding a niche market and turning their personal experience in the world of football into a business with good prospects.
A virtual gala to reward a year of hard work
The finalists will present their projects this Wednesday to a jury made up of representatives of the main public and private institutions in the country that work for the company. The final decision will be announced on October 29.
In addition to the two main awards, during the AIJEC gala, the Recognition for the Best Business Career will also be presented, which the association presents annually to a consolidated entrepreneur to distinguish his career; the Recognition of Business Linguistic Quality, for a positive promotion of the use of the Catalan language in companies as a tool for qualitative improvement; the Recognition of the Social Entrepreneur and the award for the Future Young Entrepreneur who wants to reward an entrepreneurial project worked by children under 18 years of age.