5G Barcelona and Wayra (Telefónica) choose the winners of the II edition of their acceleration programme

• The second edition of the ‘5G ScaleUp Program’ has selected four Spanish startups to boost enterprise in 5G technology.

16 March, 2021

Barcelona, 16 March 2021.– Flash Park, Ebre Drone, Hop Ubiquitous and Liip were the four startups chosen to take part in the second edition of the ‘5G ScaleUp Program’. This is an initiative promoted by 5G Barcelona, a programme promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona that seeks to position Barcelona and Catalonia as an innovative and open environment for the validation and adoption of 5G technologies and applications in a real-life environment, in collaboration with Telefónica and i2Cat. Wayra, Telefónica’s open innovation hub, is also a participant on the acceleration programme.

The selected projects will take part on this programme for four months with a view to boosting enterprise in 5G technology. They will have access to The Thinx 5G Barcelona, one of most cutting-edge and best equipped 5G environments. They will also be given training in areas such as finance, sales, marketing and investment, and receive advice from experts, access to investors, training, networking opportunities and visibility within the 5G ecosystem.

The startups chosen in this edition for the ‘5G ScaleUp Program’ are:

• Flash Park (Barcelona): since 2020 this startup has been developing an app to locate available car parking spaces in large cities, using a renewable energy-powered sensor network.
• Ebre Drone (Tarragona): founded in 2019 and specialized in using drones to gather data in industry and agriculture. Leaders in spraying farmland and pioneers in industrial preventive maintenance, particularly in the energy sector (wind, solar, electrical grid, etc.)
• Hop Ubiquitous (Murcia Region): founded in 2013, it offers a sustainable urban design solution to help cities fight climate change by providing support in decision-making, responsible investment and IoT-and AI-based action plans.
• Liip (Valencia): founded in 2015, it ventured into the field of eHealth with wearable devices (IoT) and innovative, easy-to-use software services, which yield peace of mind, knowledge and prevention regarding people’s wellbeing and health.

Criteria used to select the projects included consideration of the solutions’ market potential and scalability. These premises were also applied last year, when the startups that took part in the programme’s first edition were Mcsystems, Oliver and Lamarclabs.

“At 5G Barcelona and MWCapital we are firmly committed to boosting enterprise in 5G technology and therefore offer the winning startups access to The Thinx 5G Barcelona laboratory, a state-of-the-art site at which they can develop their solutions and help to consolidate the 5G entrepreneurial ecosystem”, stated Eduard Martín, 5G Director of Mobile World Capital Barcelona and CEO of 5G Barcelona.

Marta Antúnez, Director of Wayra Barcelona, meanwhile commented that “at Wayra (Telefónica), we believe that the 5G ScaleUp Program offers a great opportunity for startups to test their products with 5G connectivity and to scale their solutions alongside mentors and key partners in the ecosystem, which bring them value and enables them to generate impact.