Valencia, 19 December 2022. – The I Startup Acceleration Program of Opentop, Valenciaport’s open innovation hub, has already selected 12 startups as finalists of its I Acceleration Program, after closing the call recently.
The initiative, led by Fundación Valenciaport with the support of Telefónica Open Future, launched for this call four interesting challenges related to the energy transition and the digitization of the port logistics sector, obtaining great support from the national and international entrepreneurial ecosystem. On this occasion it should be noted that 50% of the finalist startups are international projects, the result of Opentop’s projection abroad.
In recent days, a professional committee formed by representatives of Fundación Valenciaport, Telefónica Open Future and reference profiles of the sector, have evaluated all the applications received to make a pre-selection among the candidates.
The startups chosen after this process are: Smart Shipping, Aventra Group, Greemko, SenseFinity, Escission, Sensingtools, Block Shipping, DMS Logistics, Nextport, Gandolapp, Macomi and ActionTracker.
The 12 finalists will compete in a Pitch Day on December 21, in front of a jury made up of specialists from the port logistics sector and experts in innovation and entrepreneurship who will assess their suitability to be part of Opentop’s I Acceleration Program.
The selected companies will start the acceleration program in January and, during the 6-month duration, will have access to the Port of Valencia business cluster and funding sources, strategic connections with potential partners, networking and high-value mentoring, with specific personalized support in areas of business, communication, sales, media impact, etc., everything necessary to enhance the growth of their business project.
Telefónica Open Future’s investment ecosystem will also be at the service of the accelerated companies to expand funding options, and they will also have access to the Port of València’s business cluster to create synergies and validate their projects.
The challenges of the 1st Call for the Opentop Startup Acceleration Program
The Port Authority of Valencia and Boluda Corporación Marítima have proposed two of the four challenges of this call, completed with two other “Opentop” challenges.
Boluda proposes the reduction of the carbon footprint of its operations by minimizing the risk of investments. For its part, the Port Authority of Valencia wants to be able to predict daily port traffic based on the application of digital technologies, integrating data from multiple sources.
Opentop, with the first of the two challenges it is launching, is looking for startups with solutions to predict the time that each container will remain in the port, while its second challenge is aimed at the automatic planning of the activities of the parties involved in maritime-terrestrial intermodality.