This morning La Salle Campus Barcelona-URL, through its innovation park La Salle Technova Barcelona, and the Free Trade Zone Consortium of Barcelona have brought the logistics start-up acceleration programme, eDelivery Accelerator, to an end. The act was attended by the special state delegate for the Free Trade Zone Consortium (CZFB), Pere Navarro, and Josep Miquel Piqué, executive president of La Salle Technova Barcelona.
The programme lasted 22 weeks beginning last September at the facilities of La Salle Technova Barcelona, and has involved 9 international start-ups from the logistics sector working on B2B and B2C projects. The programme put the companies in contact with other businesses in the logistics sector, as well as investors who will be able to finance their growth. The first participants included 9 start-ups, both international (two from London and one from Estonia) and national, which were selected as part of the Start-up Connection Hub held at eDelivery Barcelona last June: Freightalia, Gantabi, Revoolt Smart Solutions, SmartMonkey.IO, Tridens, Outvio, Unmanned Life, Manzaning and Chaingo Tech. All of them offer innovative projects in the logistics sector introducing elements such as Big Data, Business Intelligence, the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence in the process.
Josep M Piqué, executive president of La Salle Technova Barcelona, highlighted that “the start-ups and consolidated companies that have taken part in the different activities of the programme have been able to deepen their mutual knowledge of the needs and challenges posed by the growth and sophistication of the distribution of physical products to the digital consumer. On the one hand, start-ups have been able to learn about the organisational and service provision challenges that companies used to well-defined physical environments have, while consolidated companies have been able to learn about the strategies and digital services that will allow them to optimise final distribution, be it through online channels or traditional channels. The programme has also highlighted the main competitive challenges that established companies have, as well as detecting improvements in business processes that can be solved by start-ups.
Pere Navarro, special state delegate for the Free Trade Zone Consortium (CZFB) and President of SIL and eDelivery Barcelona, explained that “the CZFB is a great tool for economic transformation that incorporates innovation, social commitment and the spirit of collaboration into its DNA. Projects like the eDelivery Incubator incubation programme are a good example of this. Navarro also announced that “with a view to the next edition of SIL and eDelivery Barcelona, we’re already working together with La Salle Technova Barcelona on the creation of a platform that will bring together the digital transformation of retail, eCommerce, logistics and delivery sector, and will include an incubator and accelerator programme that aims to further boost talent and the creation of innovation”.
Anna Buil, Communications Director of Viena, one of the participating companies, rated the programme very positively as “an effective way of keeping abreast of trends and disruption caused by the entry of new technologies. Today, technological innovations are advancing at a rapid pace and are an opportunity for growth that no one wants to miss out on, they have become a reality. These sessions are a win-win opportunity, both for the start-ups and the participating companies”, as well as pointing out that “we were pleasantly surprised that solutions have already been found to existing problems in our environment, and that they can be applied to projects we are currently working”. The participants highlighted the value of some of the training modules such as team leadership, financing and sales training, but the real highlight was the Networking and the relationships that have been established between the participants. In this sense, Ángel Sánchez from the Revoolt start-up explains that “interesting potential collaborations have arisen both at the supplier level and at the client level with companies from the programme where we have also woven an interesting network of contacts that will be of great future value”.
Finally, the special state delegate for the CZFB, Pere Navarro, has announced that “the Free Trade Zone Consortium of Barcelona will continue supporting initiatives to promote new uses, build synergies, foster business collaboration and project Barcelona and the Metropolitan Area”.
