• The new edition of Cellnex Bridge begins with twice as many startups, a longer duration, more financial support and new challenges

• Innogando, Aldora Tech, Circulr Sound, Oroi Wellbeing, BlindStairs and Salus Coop have been selected to receive mentoring from innovation experts, as well as financial support, over the next six months

Barcelona, 15 September 2022. The Cellnex Foundation has presented the six projects that are entering the second edition of the acceleration programme Cellnex Bridge, which again has the collaboration of the accelerator AticcoLab and the social innovation consultant Innuba. The Kick Off event with the chosen startups was held in Barcelona, at the foundation’s headquarters, where the social impact projects were announced.

After the success achieved in the first edition, projects that offer solutions to the challenge of reducing digital, social and geographical divides have once again been sought, also expanding the vision to include initiatives that contribute to environmental sustainability and the fight against climate change. 

One aspect to highlight is the duration of the programme, which extends from three to six months, with mentoring for startups playing a fundamental role. The scope of the programme has also been expanded, taking on six—instead of three—initiatives. “Our goal is to promote talent and innovation with social impact initiatives”, says Àngels Ucero, Director of the Cellnex Foundation.

Another great new feature of the edition will be the creation of an innovation ecosystem between the startups that have gone through the programme and the future members, thereby creating a hub for the exchange of information, knowledge, experience and learning among all the mentors, experts and participants. Among the future goals of the foundation is expanding the scope and internationalising the project to include other countries in which the Cellnex company operates.

Selected projects

Registration for the second programme, which was open until 25 July on the foundation website, got a large response with over 60 applications received. All of them stood out for their talent and their worthwhile value propositions, linked to areas such as education, sustainability, support of vulnerable groups and the development of rural areas. An expert team of judges made up of industry professionals and Cellnex executives was in charge of selecting the startups:

• Innogando: developing technology in the Smart Farming sector. Their aim is to digitalise the livestock sector through GPS control and a livestock monitoring system in order to improve livestock farmers’ quality of life, farm profitability and animal welfare.

• AldoraTech: offering a parcel delivery solution in rural and remote areas using drones that facilitate an efficient, sustainable and safe transition towards greener automated logistics.  

• Circulr Sound: software solution designed for elderly people’s safety, which applies Artificial Intelligence techniques to audio. It uses the microphones as ‘360-degree eyes’ to create a real-time virtual map of acoustic events in the environment. 

• Oroiwellbeing: virtual reality platform with therapeutic content aimed at generating emotional well-being and cognitive stimulation for the elderly.

• BlindStairs: candidate tracking system designed to avoid gender, ethnicity, nationality, age and sexual orientation biases throughout the entire personnel selection process, with the aim of ending problems such as the glass ceiling, the salary gap and discrimination of minority groups.

• Salus Coop: non-profit citizen’s cooperative that manages data for health research, based on the recognition of the individual’s ownership and control of their data, thus changing the traditional governance model and making more—and more diverse—data available to health researchers. 

Each of these startups will have the support and advice of a group of mentors, as well as Cellnex executives and specialists, and will be able to connect with other entrepreneurs and talk to investors throughout the programme. The panel of mentors, experts in entrepreneurship and open innovation, will be individually adapted to the needs of each project to provide support and guidance for their business plans and social impact. 

In addition, the entrepreneurs will participate in theoretical and practical workshops, round tables and weekly workshops to address aspects related to financing, sales, personal development and soft skills, and will be offered financial support to successfully carry out proofs of concept of their products or services.

Through this initiative, the Cellnex Foundation aims to extend bridges of cooperation, create alliances, generate social wealth and move towards digitalisation, thereby contributing to the reduction of social inequalities and the improvement of digital capacity, quality of life and environmental sustainability.