Blitab wins the pitching competition at 4YFN Shanghai and will travel to 4YFN 2017 in Barcelona

• 4YFN debuted in Asia at GSMA Mobile World Congress Shanghai gathering more than 100 digital startups, 60 investors and over 60 speaker
• Companies from the Spanish delegation, such as Tiendeo and Accent Systems, come back from Shanghai with potential business proposals with key Asian corporations
• The members of the 4YFN Investors Club visited Chinaccelerator, Asia’s leading acceleration programme, and Xinchejian, China’s first hackerspace, to generate synergies with the local entrepreneurial community

July 1, 2016

4 Years From Now (4YFN), the global business platform for the growing community of technology startups, promoted by Mobile World Capital Barcelona and the GSMA, today recognised Blitab as the most innovative digital project at the Shanghai edition of the 4YFN Awards. The company has developed the first tablet that offers braille code for the visually impaired. As the winner of the contest, Blitab will have its own space at 4YFN 2017 in Barcelona.

The finals saw participation by EDaura (United Arab Emirates), an application allowing teachers to boost their productivity both inside and outside the classroom. China’s entrepreneurial community was also well represented at the final, with entries by Yunmake, a smart mobile tech company that furnishes all types of vehicles with mobile technologies; Robin8, a smart marketplace that links brands and opinion leaders using specific queries and searches through the social networks; and Ximmerse, a startup dedicated to invest and develop virtual reality devices.

“Being able to create opportunities for digital startups around the world is what drives the pitching sessions at 4YFN,” said Aleix Valls, CEO of Mobile World Capital Barcelona. Valls added that “at this contest particular stress was placed on the international scope of the projects and their scalability,” which he said “is fundamental for the growth of all startups in a competitive environment like today’s.”

4YFN Shanghai Edition

The first Asian edition of 4YFN drew more than 100 startups and major companies to its exhibition area. Two of the exhibiting startups, Spain’s Tiendeo and Germany’s Gamewheel, also participated in the session Mobile Innovation: The Startup Pitch Challenge, within the main conference program at Mobile World Congress Shanghai.

The relationship between entrepreneurs and investors played an important role at 4YFN Shanghai. In this regard 4YFN attracted more than 60 members of the international investment community to the congress. Among them, a total of 25 representatives took a tour of leading centres in the Chinese entrepreneurial ecosystem, such as Chinaccelerator, Asia’s leading acceleration programme and Xinchejian, China’s first hackerspace: a coworking space to develop technological and computer projects. 4YFN Shanghai also generated 10 Founders & Investors sessions at a specific pitching area in which entrepreneurs and startups where able to present their projects to investors, companies and other attendees.

4YFN Shanghai boasted more than 40 hours of content and over 60 speakers, among them Yossi Vardi, Chairman of 4YFN; Saket Modi, CEO of Lucideus Tech and a serial entrepreneur that features on Forbes Asia’s “30 Under 30” list; Ignacio Martínez Trujillo, Managing Director of Innovation and Global Development at LaLiga; Bessie Lee, CEO of WPP China; and Adam Lashinsky, Editorial Director of Fortune Brainstorm Tech and Asst. Managing Editor of Fortune.

The attendees were able to participate in an extensive programme of workshops that generated more than 12 hours of training over the congress’ three days. The most popular workshops included that by Eneko Knorr, founder and CEO of Ludei, with a presentation on “How to Do Business in Silicon Valley, Europe and China: Pros and Cons” and the session led by Juan Álvarez, CEO of Seed & Click, on “Angel Investment in Spain and Europe”.

Exporting digital talent

For the second consecutive year Mobile World Capital Barcelona supported a business delegation, together with the Secretary of State for Telecommunications and the Information Society, through RED.es, the Regional Government of Catalonia, represented by ACCIÓ, and the City Council of Barcelona. The expedition consisted of 16 Spanish companies that participated in various activities to foster interaction with agents in the local entrepreneurial ecosystem.

According to Eva Martín, cofounder of Tiendeo, “Participating in the congress in conjunction with Mobile World Capital Barcelona allowed us to engage directly with the Asian ecosystem, and strive to promote new business opportunities in a growing market that we are very interested in entering. The experience was very positive and we will return home with new and specific ideas.” Along this same line, Jordi Casamada, CEO of Accent Systems, added that: “Being part of 4YFN has given us the opportunity to meet with a major electric car manufacturer interested in introducing our technology in their vehicles. It has also been a great opprtunity to close a meeting with the R&D team of Huawei to become partof the NB-IoT working group  and position ourselves as one of the first companies worldwide able to develop solutions based on this technology.”

The other companies that formed part of the delegation are Tiendeo, Accent Systems, Bibold, Crazy4Media Group, Cronos Telecom Europe, Soluciones Cuatroochenta, Enigmedia, Globalcomm Europe, i2factory, J21 Consulting y Servicios, Moove Team, Mybrana, Víntegris, Adele Robots, CTTC and Familyar.