Delivery of Ekiten 2018 contest awards

Delivery of Ekiten 2018 contest awards

Mondragon Unibertsitatea rewards the best 10 business ideas in its ‘Ekiten’ entrepreneurship programme.

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Today, the awards for the best business projects of the Ekiten entrepreneurship programme have been delivered to the Arrasate campus of Mondragon Unibertsitatea. This competition aims to instil among the students of Mondragon Unibertsitatea and the network of Mondragon universities in Latin America the culture of entrepreneurship and the conviction that it is possible to create a business or start a new business.

 

During this edition, four categories were summoned, in which a total of 34 projects have participated, 5 of which come from the network of Mondragon Universities in Latin America (Universidad Unipanamericana, from Colombia, and Mondragon University Mexico, Querétaro Campus).  The academic coordinator of the Higher Polytechnic School of Mondragon Unibertsitatea, Nekane Errasti, accompanied by the heads of Gaztempresa, Inma Ramos, Landaola (Gipuzkoa Federation of Rural Development Associations), Agurtzane Díaz, Agurtzane Etxaniz, Kimu Berri and Mikel Orobengoa were in charge of delivering the awards.

 

The categories in which the awards are divided are New Business Ideas, sponsored by Gaztempresa; Ideas and Projects for the Development of the Rural Environment, sponsored by Landaola (Federation of Associations of Rural Development of Gipuzkoa); and Innovative Ideas and Services to Facilitate the Daily Lives of People, sponsored by KimuBerri. These three categories are aimed at the students of Mondragon Unibertsitatea. There is also a category for Latin American projects, aimed at students of the universities of the network of Mondragon Universities: Mondragon Mexico (Mexico – Querétaro) and Unipanamericana (Colombia – Bogotá).

 

In each category, the award for the first place consisted of €1,000 for the group, while the price for the second and third places consisted of €500 for each group, respectively. The jury of this programme took into account the most viable projects and the capacity to generate more employment and wealth when deciding on the winners as well as the originality of the ideas. The opinion of the audience was also taken into account, based on the likes received in the videos published for each project.

 

A total of 34 projects participated in the contest. Specifically, in the category of New Business Ideas, 21 projects were submitted; in Rural Development, 5 projects; in Products and Services that Facilitate Daily Life, 10 projects; and in the Mondragon University Network category, 5 projects.  In total 34 projects were submitted, some of them being submitted to more than one category.

THE BEST IN EACH CATEGORY

New Business Ideas

The project called Zustatic won the first prize in the category of New Business Ideas, being awarded €1,000. It consists of templates that allow professionals to receive data in real time relating to the footsteps and gaits of patients. The students of the Master’s Degree in Embedded Systems Eneko Bermejo, Gorka Ramírez and Daniel Pérez are part of the project.

 

The second prize was awarded to Daphkit, a kit that detects the potential toxicity of crops and farmland in a simple and fast manner, and the third prize was awarded to the Intelligent Surf initiative, which is based on a smart surfboard to improve surfers’ technique thanks to the collection of quantitative and objective data.

Rural Development

The initiative “Beer made from by-products from the cheese-making industry” was awarded the first prize in the category of Ideas and Projects for Rural Development. It consists of a brewery that produces craft beverages based on whey, a by-product generated by the cheese-making companies in the area and that, despite its great nutritional value, is disposed of, causing severe pollution issues for the environment. The group is formed by the students of the Master’s Degree in Gastronomic Sciences Paula Torán, Ignacio de Tomás, Fátima Goiri, and Devin Uy.

 

The second prize was awarded to BerrizEcotourism. A new way of living and doing tourism, in a circular way. It consists of an outdoors camping tent made from recycled materials and designed to generate the minimum possible waste, reusing existing materials. The third place remained vacant.

Products or Processes that Facilitate the Daily Lives of People

In the category of Projects that Facilitate the Lives of People, the winner was the company Sharik, a social enterprise that operates in India, which has created a solution that guarantees the right to identity through a flexible, inclusive and global birth registration system. Its members are the students of the Degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation Silvia Sánchez, María Braco, Gorka Madariaga, and Sara Antón.

 

The second prize was awarded to the Electric Stroller project. These are electric vehicles for children, which will operate with a battery. Thus, the effort made at the time of pushing will be lower than in usual situations.

 

The third prize was awarded to the Sign Talk project. Currently, society is increasingly aware of the importance of providing people with functional diversities with the necessary means for their integration. Sign Talk consists of a tactile glove that transmits, by means of a Bluetooth connection, data of the movement of the hands to a smartphone. The application is responsible for communicating with the server where the smart gestural recognition system is located, which translates the signals.

Mondragon University Network

In the category of the Mondragon University Network, the first prize was awarded to the Mobility Safe company. It is an app with a geo-positioning system, which offers the cyclist community the possibility to access and detect on the map if a stolen bicycle is found near its position, in order to generate an immediate warning to a nearby police officer. The group was formed by Telecommunications Engineering students Julio Cesar Agudelo, Cristian Camilo Gonzalez, Wilmer Armando Guerrero, and John Alexander Molina.

 

The second prize has awarded to AppVoc, a solution that seeks to contribute to decreasing the level of desertion in universities. It is a technological support for students to identify their professional vocation through different psycho-technical tests.

 

The third place remained vacant.