Esade Alumni Entrepreneurship and the Esade Alumni Business Innovation & Technologies Club have organised the 1st edition of the Digital Innovation Challenge, with the sponsorship of Jelliby, with the goal of promoting innovation in the digital sector, sharing disruptive new trends, and creating a point of contact between established companies and projects with a high potential for growth.
Following the example of the Real Estate Challenge, this new Challenge is open to digitalization solutions that address market challenges and have a significant impact in sectors like education, health, entertainment, mobility, agriculture, food, energy, real estate, marketing, finances, e-commerce, tourism, and consumer services. To do so, the top five projects from among more than 30 submitted were shortlisted.
“We want to assist projects in the Esade ecosystem (students or recent graduates) who are in the initial phase so they have a space where they can feel supported in each phase of development,” says Acisclo Pérez, president of the club. In this way, this initiative strengthens our community and fosters the development of new emerging talent so that it can have a significant impact in our society.
The winner of this year’s edition, Cambitas, has developed a renewable, profitable solution based on a platform that enables companies in the construction sector to efficiently manage their inventory. Via an app, Cambitas has developed a way of recovering part of the income lost due to waste of surplus materials.
Xavier Estanyol (GBD 22), the founder of Cambitas, expressed his heartfelt gratitude for the award: “I am very grateful that I had the opportunity to submit the project in an Esade event and connect with Esade BAN. It has been an incredible, matchless learning and improvement experience, and I can only be thankful for it and continue to work to make the most of it.” He added, “At Cambitas, we are creating an environment in which circularity is an option, which leads to lower CO2 emissions.”
The other alumni who submitted their projects are Gonzalo del Solar (MIE 24) and Lisa Hofman (MIE 24) with Efficraft AI; José Andrés De Lorenzo-Cáceres (IT&IP13, Cursos de Posgrado 13) with Maska; Alex Berezhnoz (Kic InnoEnergy 23), Yusuf Gürkan (Kic InnoEnergy 23), and Mariana López with StoreNow; and Miguel Sirvent (EMDB 19) with his project TrueCold.
• Efficraft AI is a highly efficient SaaS AI platform designed to speed up the creation of medical and promotional contents for the pharmaceutical industry. To do this, it uses generative AI to support everything from strategic knowledge to final material approval in a bid to lower time and costs.
• Maska was founded to help bring visibility to companies’ and organizations’ sustainability actions so that they become a talking points for the rest of society. To achieve this, it works with a tech platform and multidisciplinary team specialized in sustainability communication for companies and public administrations targeted at all stakeholders.
• StoreNow is an online platform that provides optimal energy storage solutions, prioritizing the integration of renewable energies.
• TrueCold transforms IoT data into processable information by guaranteeing the traceability of the cold chain while also lowering operating workloads. It also enables users to react before alerts turn into problems thanks to an AI-powered platform and an early anomaly detection algorithm.
All of these projects have benefitted from mentoring sessions by members of the Business Innovation and Technology Committee of the Esade Alumni Business Innovation & Technologies Club. “This first edition was a success in terms of both the level of the projects and the mentoring of the participants, which left all parties satisfied. We hope that this Challenge continues, gains a solid footing, and creates new synergies between the community, students, and young alumni,” added Acisclo Pérez.
