This year’s startup competition has been an extremely competitive and fiercely fought battle between some of the most exciting and innovative startups across our 10 industry tracks.

Barcelona based Bioo took home the Industry and Energy award after a hotly contested battle. Their innovative approach to generating the cleanest energy possible won them a lot of affection throughout the event.

“We generate electricity from plant photosynthesis”, CFO Alexandre Díaz told me. “Bioo Lite is the plant pot that charges your phone, and the Bioo Panels provide electricity for the house or building you’re working in.” 

CEO Pablo Vidarte explained that the technology is based on a biological battery, which uses the resources expelled by plants through the roots after photosynthesis occurs. Bacteria eat the carbon based substances and liberate the electrons, allowing them to be caught in order to generate a current.  

Winners of the Media and Entertainment award were automated video ad generator The Motion. Marketing manager Candida Vivalda explained how they take product data and information directly from a client website and automatically generate video ads with it.

“This is for the Melia Hotel Resort”, she says as she shows me a demo of the product. “You take the URL of the hotel, paste it in our user interface and the video is immediately generated”.

“The video gives the main information of the product and is perfect for promotional campaigns. It gives you the freedom to create different formats, languages and call to actions.”

Proudly displaying their award for the Food category were Phenix, an exciting enterprise helping other businesses to tackle their waste problems.

“We work with food or non-food products to recover what is going to be wasted”, Miguel Die Gonzalez explains. “We work with retailers, analyse what they’re wasting and implement the solution.” 

Speaking about the startup competition, Gonzalez re-affirmed the strength and depth of the talent on show. “It was a hard competition. There were really good startups with us”, he said. 

Phenix are showing that it’s possible to create value by doing something good for society and the environment. They’ve created a structure that allows them to do business with enterprises while also doing good, by giving free products to associations that would have otherwise ended up as waste. 

The full list of winners in each industry track can be seen by visiting our dedicated startup competition page here.