EIC Corporate Days: meeting GALP
On 16–17 December 2019, companies supported under the European Innovation Council (EIC) pilot increased their possibilities in accelerating their business collaborating with Galp, one of the global players in the energy market. Barbara IoT was one of the 15 innovators Galp welcomed to pitch and present their business cases in Lisbon, Portugal.
Around a month ago, Barbara IoT was invited by Galp, within the scope of the EIC Corporate Days, to present our business case and explain how we can help energy companies in their digital transformation processes through our secure edge platform for the industrial IoT. EIC Corporate Days are tailor-made and highly effective acceleration services to facilitate collaboration between large corporates and EIC funded SMEs (Barbara IoT obtained a “SME Instrument Phase 1” grant two years ago). More than 60 top corporate representatives of Galp opened the doors to startups and scaleups that provide innovative technologies in circular economy, smart energy, urban mobility and digital solutions. This was an opportunity for us to expand our network and take the chance to leverage our business in one-to-one meetings with Galp c-level managers.
At the event, Carlos Gomes da Silva, CEO at Galp, spoke on the motivation behind it: “We’re looking for very capable, focused, and determined people with open mindsets that help us to see the world with different eyes. In the interaction with the startups, we aim to find solutions that can be clearly industrialized and impact the transition that we are living today.”
Galp’s COO, Susana Quintana Plaza, highlighted the benefits of collaborating with external innovation providers like Barbara IoT: “The SMEs have the innovation, the speed, and the best interest to make innovation happen. Corporations like Galp have the access to the markets, have the brand, and the access to the customer. Our goal is to collaborate with SMEs who already have products, solutions and business models and then to scale globally. It is a win-win situation for both sides.”
Jorge Fernandes, Global Head of Innovation at Galp, commented on the initiative: “We really admire these startups for their ingenuity and for their resourceful creativity. The EIC ecosystem is fantastic. We’re talking about a pool of over 5.000 companies that have already been selected and validated through the EU funding mechanisms. Out of those we selected 15 that are very promising in delivering solutions that meet our challenges. We gained a very nice overview of startups that are really at the forefront of innovation and technology and we are looking forward to collaborating.”
Our CEO, David Purón, who was in charge of presenting Barbara at the event, explained why our platform is the right solution to overcome the main challenges that companies face when implementing industrial IoT: “Digital transformation in industrial environments is really challenging because of the fragmentation of the data sources, the scalability issues and the cybersecurity risks. Barbara enables the secure dispatch of multiple plant and equipment data to the Internet, improving operations performance up to 30%. We have successfully deployed our solution in several verticals such as Logistics, Agriculture and Energy, and we are eager to show Galp how we can help them”
The EIC Corporate Days is an excellent mechanism to engage big corporates like Galp — which are looking for innovative solutions to improve their products and services — with startups like Barbara IoT — that are always looking for customers.
Being part of the EIC Community allow us to participate in such an opportunity, now it’s time for us to show the value of our proposal.
This post was originally published at barbaraiot.com on January 29th, 2020. If you like it and want to receive similar content, subscribe to our Newsletter
