ONCE Foundation has incorporated four social ventures into its social ecosystem, within the seventh edition of its Growth Program for Startups, which operate in the areas of disability and aging.
Specifically, these are Coby, Hablalo, Aurax and Eonesia, that had already been present at the ONCE Social Group stand during the most recent edition of the South Summit held last spring. In this way, there are now twenty-six innovative projects with tangible impact on the quality of life of the aforementioned groups that the ONCE Foundation has supported through this initiative.
The Companies
The big novelty of this latest edition was the internationalization of the project. As a result, Coby (Germany), an AI-powered plush toy that helps children with routines and emotions through voice, with parental control, and Hablalo (Argentina), an app from Astech that makes communication easier for people with disabilities, have joined the program. Iberia has also integrated it to make the flight experience more accessible.
Joined by them, Eonesia, a Spanish platform that creates immersive and interactive learning content, especially with virtual reality, designed also for people with disabilities; and Aurax, which develops MouthX, a buccal splint that enables users to operate computers, mobile devices and other devices without using their hands, have been selected as well.
The Growth Program
The Growth Program, with the collaboration of PwC, provides participating companies with a team of growth experts to develop specific projects tailored to their needs, focusing on removing barriers that limit their growth.
In this sense, the initiative has evolved from startup acceleration to the ability to address, in a personalized way, the main growth challenges these companies face. To that end, the service covers solving various needs linked to key growth levers, such as: business (projection and redesign of the business model, definition of market size, or pricing strategy), company structure (financial, legal, tax, or people-related aspects) or capital (for example, preparation of investment rounds). Moreover, the support lasting between 8 and 12 weeks will prioritize actions with immediate impact through clear deliverables and an implementation plan for subsequent execution.
It is also worth noting that as a consequence of the work carried out across these seven editions of the program, public funding of 7 million euros for the various projects has been secured, and 21 million euros in private investment has been raised. All of this has led to the creation of more than 220 jobs.
