International. The Open University of Catalonia, UOC, participated in the start-up fair held under the umbrella of the Mobile World Congress, MWC, which ended this week in Barcelona, giving visibility to eight emerging and spin-off companies.
The participation was made through Hubbik, its platform to support entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer, which has remained active during the pandemic. "Through the virtual incubator, it has been possible to continue responding to the needs of entrepreneurs by offering them Hubbik's advisory and mentoring programmes and services in a totally virtual way," explained Mireia Riera, director of the Research and Innovation Area of the UOC.
Designing learning experiences in six easy steps
The BeChallenge platform allows any professional, without being an expert, to design learning experiences based on projects or challenges in six simple steps. The creator of BeChallenge is Xavi Pascual, Master in Education and ICT (E-learning) from the UOC. Pascual values positively being in the 4YFN with the UOC, an entity that invested in his initiative, because it will give him an opportunity to show "a disruptive proposal in the field of education and training". "The fact that the UOC, the first university in the world completely online, has BeChallenge leaves us in a very good position", celebrates Pascual.
With the pandemic "it has become clear that the educational world needs tools such as the one proposed by BeChallenge," says Pascual. The educational field has seen the need to go beyond digitalization and "begin to evolve its educational and training models with the use of tools that accompany it," he explains.
Motion capture based on open technologies
The start-up company Chordata Motion, specialized in the development of costumes to capture movement and digitize it in 3D, is another of the projects that will be present at the 4YFN with the UOC. This initiative was one of the winners of the 2019 edition of the final of the SpinUOC entrepreneurship program and has also received investment from the university. "At Chordata Motion we are implementing a motion capture work environment based on open technologies, which is a radical disruption of this business model," says Juancho Casañas, CEO of the company.
Casañas hopes to "establish contact with potential investors or institutions with which to create synergies", and welcomes the UOC's support because "it helps us to grow and achieve new opportunities for our start-up".
Inclusive educational technology
Gemma Fàbregas, Master in Multimedia Applications from the UOC, who in 2017 won one of the SpinUOC awards with the I also read project, is in charge of Diversity Apps, a start-up company that will also be at the UOC stand and in which the university has also invested. Specialists in cognitive accessibility are dedicated to creating inclusive educational technology and also to advising the educational technology sector in this area.
Fàbregas explains that he wants to take advantage of his presence at the fair, thanks to the support of the UOC, to show creation and advisory services in inclusive technology. This start-up wants to establish contacts with other entrepreneurs for possible collaborations, as well as with future investors. The will is "to grow our application to turn it into a platform of accessible educational services," says Fàbregas, who affirms that the pandemic has made its number of customers in Latin America grow, despite the difficulties of its activity.
Technology for education respectful of scientific evidence
Àlex Letosa, collaborating professor of the Studies of Psychology and Educational Sciences of the UOC, is the promoter of Educatool, "the online tool for a respectful and loving education, based on scientific evidence", one of the winning projects of SpinUOC 2021. Now, thanks to the UOC, it will be present at the 4YFN. At this fair, Letosa wants to "get contacts to study different growth plans" that its start-up has established for the near future. "We also think it is a great possibility to publicize our online educational and training tool to the general public," he explains.
Letosa, who values very positively the collaboration of the UOC to grow the company, explains that, in part, the pandemic has contributed to promoting the project, since "the population has become accustomed to using online training tools, for example, to do psychological sessions by videoconference and asynchronous courses".
Learning solutions in the metaverse
The UOC spin-off immersium Studio, recipient of an investment from the university and winner of one of the most relevant awards in the world on virtual reality with training on ICU and covid, will also participate in the 4YFN at the stand of the academic institution. The CEO of this company, Luis Villarejo, celebrates this presence because the MWC fair "is a very important showcase of the entrepreneurial and innovative scene, and constitutes a meeting place with a multitude of agents".
Villarejo points out that it is a fantastic time to position themselves with online learning initiatives and in the metaverse, because the pandemic "has attracted many companies and institutions to develop learning experiences in the metaverse that complement the most common teaching."
Connecting companies and programmers in minutes
Eduard Teixidó is the CEO of Opground, a start-up that connects companies with the most suitable programmers, just as recruiters do, but in less than five minutes and without anyone wasting their time. Thanks to Opground, companies can save up to 80% of the time they spend looking for new employees. With their presence at the 4YFN, they hope to "increase the network of contacts, give visibility to our value proposition and learn about other projects," he explains. Teixidó, who values the UOC's support for the project very positively, recalls that they were established at the most critical moment of the pandemic. "Regardless of the complications that this could generate, it has also made us a much more united team and prepared for the ups and downs," he says.
Preventive protection for the elderly 24 hours a day
Ángel Puertas, Master in Executive MBA in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from the UOC, is responsible for SeniorDomo, one of the emerging companies that won the 2019 edition of the final of the SpinUOC entrepreneurship program and also the recipient of an investment from the university. Puertas, who hopes to make "contacts and potential customers" at 4YFN, values the UOC's support very positively and affirms that it has acted as a "key accelerator" for the project.
The pandemic has affected his company, but it has had positive aspects. "For us it has been a positive experience: I think that without the challenges posed by the global crisis we would not have survived, because we have forced ourselves to improve and scale our business model in another way," explains Puertas.
Buy the products and services of movies and series
José Antonio García Pamplona, student of the Executive MBA in Digital Business at the UOC, was one of the winners of spinUOC 2020 with Waital, a project that turns the viewing of a film into an unprecedented experience of buying, from an application, the products that appear in it. García celebrates his participation in the 4YFN thanks to the UOC because it is "a great opportunity to make ourselves known and establish new relationships with future investors and possible collaborations with other companies in the audiovisual and technological sector".
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