IMAGINE IF! local finals: an amazing evening to award the most innovative startups of Barcelona!

The 2019 edition of IMAGINE IF! Barcelona came to an end yesterday with an exciting and praised pitch competition hosted by the Movistar Centre. The nine science-based startups participating in the accelerator programme organised by the Barcelona branch of Innovation Forum had 3 minutes to explain the idea behind their projects and convince a panel of expert judges of their products’ strengths and the feasibility of their business models. More then 100 enthusiastic participants interested in knowing the exciting innovation proposed by our contestants attended the event. The pitch of Jaume Puig, founder of Biel Glasses was unanimously chosen as the winner of this year’s local competition!

During the past two months, IMAGINE IF! – Innovation Forum’s accelerator programme for bioscience ventures – has provided nine of the most promising startups placed in Cataluña with an amazing opportunity to learn from top experts in the field of innovation, entrepreneurship and investment. The participants to the programme were guided through tailored workshops towards the preparation of a persuasive pitch that could highlight the solidity of their projects and feasibility as business investments. Biel Glasses won this year’s local competition thanks to an engaging pitch reagarding an innovative solution to help people suffering of low vision. Jaume Puig, founder of the company has a son affected by this condition and he is striving to find a way to ameliorate his everyday life by creating an optic device that is able to adapt reality to the needs of a person with impaired vision. Biel Glasses gained the opportunity to enter the global IMAGINE IF finals within the Health Horizons Conference and compete for a non-dilutive cash prize of at least $10.000, access to a crowdfunding campaign, and further mentoring from industry leaders.

In addition to the winner, two second best projects were chosen to participate in the Health Horizons conference. They are Aortyx, a startup that invented an innovative patch to treat aortic dissection and Mimark, a project of the Vall d’Hebron hospital proposing a novel disgnostic system of endometrial cancer.

Noemi Balà, Co-Founder of Aortyx.

Eva Colás, Mimark.

The panel of judges was composed by four professionals with a strong experience in the startup ecosystem, such as Meriem Benmelouka – Global Business Development Manager in Roche Diabetes Care; Frederic Llordachs – Co founder of Doctoralia and partner of Braincats consulting; Daniel Moreno – Head of Innovation at the hospital german trias i pujol; Luis Ruiz – CEO of Spherium Biomed.

The judges of IMAGINE IF! Barcelona 2019, from the right: Daniel Moreno, Frederic Llordachs, Luis Ruiz, Meriem Benmelouka.

The Pitch competition was opened by Joel Sabaniego, president of Innovation Forum Barcelona, who explained how Innovation Forum was born and the invaluable work done by its international team until now in support of the transition of innovative ideas from academia to the market.

Joel Sabaniego, President of Innovation Forum Barcelona

Then, Ricky Perez, vice-president of Innovation Forum Barcelona, described in more in details the many projects that are currently being developed in Barcelona, among them Pitch in a Pub aimed at bringing innovation closer to society and Invest in Innovation, intended to fill the gap between startups and the investment ecosystem.

Ricky Perez, Vice-President of Innovation Forum Barcelona