Which Global Startups Are Attracting The Most Attention At The Moment?

A solution that enhances the value of internship processes, an online travel agency for people with disabilities or an internet that respects the user and the environment, are some of the ideas of the most 'buzzing' startups at the moment.

Symba: betting on labor talent

Symba is a project created in California as an initiative of the young Ahva Sadeghi and another group of women who seek to help corporations implement talent and training programs, offering face-to-face, virtual and hybrid options. 

The main focus is on the internship, that period of learning in companies that young people have to spend after finishing their academic studies as an internship in order to gain experience in the working world. Internships are fundamental to professional success, but traditional programs face a lack of accessibility and diversity. This is what Symba wants to change on the basis that they only offer their tool to companies that pay interns during this training period and provide them with access.

In a global job market, where internship offers can arise in the student's home town as well as in another country or continent, Symba offers an online tool that aims to make internships more accessible to students around the world by helping employers manage both remote and on-site internships and scale their programs.

Symba's comprehensive management platform helps organizations manage the logistics of an internship program, from onboarding and project assignment to communication and feedback. Its proprietary software saves organizations the time, cost and hassle associated with traditional internship programs. Symba helps organizations identify top talent from around the world and build diverse, energetic and dedicated pipelines.

The startup, now with a team of 12 people, offers the white-label software to help companies, some of the likes of Robinhood or Genentech, create an online space to communicate and collaborate with their now-distributed interns.

Alerion: the most sustainable

Basque startup Alerion specializes in creating high-precision digital duplicates using autonomous drones and automated damage assessment analysis, focusing on wind turbine inspection, solar and refinery inspections.

Alerion was born from the hand of Oier Peñagaricano and Pablo Ghiglino within the ESA-BIC program to transfer space navigation technology to drones. The result is an intelligent and autonomous aerial robot, capable of recognizing structures and analyzing data in real time.

The drones developed by Alerion are based on a proprietary laser navigation system. This technology allows them to be used as surveillance and monitoring devices in extreme conditions and complex infrastructures, where it is very difficult to reach. Another element that distinguishes its technology is that the drones are equipped with intelligence to analyze the data collected. 

Wheel the World: the world's most inclusive travels

Wheel the World is a U.S. startup that has an app that works as a multi-hotel platform for people with disabilities and maps accessibility through Artificial Intelligence. The solution offers hundreds of hotels and tours with detailed information about their accessibility. Thousands of people with disabilities, along with their companions have traveled with them from more than 10 countries, with more than 110 accessible travel routes in 35 destinations around the world.

The team that integrates the company, led by Álvaro Silberstein, CEO and co-founder, also stands out. After suffering a car accident at the age of 18 that left him in a wheelchair, Silberstein decided, together with his friend and co-creator of this initiative, Camilo Navarro, that nothing would stop his dream: to hike the Torres del Paine route in Patagonia. That is what he did and, after completing the trip, his story went viral and hundreds of people with disabilities became interested in making the same trip. That is the raison d'être for the birth of Wheel The World.

Weecover: the insurtech with the customer at the center

Hailing from Barcelona, Weecover has created a new concept for the integration of insurance solutions in B2B2C, for customers, insurers and companies, 100% digital.

It is an insurtech focused on e-commerce companies, offering insurance coverage within the online purchasing process. We combine knowledge of the digital ecosystem, innovative technological solutions and experience in the insurance sector. But above all, we are the right solution for your customers, at the right time.

The insurtech is also contemplating a B2C offering that will initially focus on pet insurance (through the WeePets brand) and all types of mobility.

Idoven: preventive medicine

Idoven is a startup that offers software in the cloud that, based on artificial intelligence, allows electrocardiograms to be analyzed, detecting and classifying arrhythmias with the precision of a cardiologist, remotely and in real time. In this way, patients with heart disease can be monitored from home.

This HealthTech startup seeks to prevent heart disease, myocardial infarction and sudden cardiac death. They are redefining the way cardiac arrhythmias are diagnosed by implementing artificial intelligence algorithms and digital health solutions.

Ienai Space, revolutionizing the propulsion market

At Ienai Space was founded with the mission to change the way the onboard electric propulsion market operates. Its goal is to remove barriers to entry for the adoption of electric propulsion technologies on smaller satellites by providing platform manufacturers and integrators with the tools to understand their propulsion requirements and the best possible hardware to address them.

Aerospace engineers, Sara Correyero, Daniel Perez and Mick Wijnen met doing their PhD thesis at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, in the space propulsion and plasmas group. In 2017, they won a competition at the international electric propulsion conference in Atlanta (USA), where they proposed the design of a lunar GPS (LPS) with nanosatellites and electric propulsion.

"There we realized that we worked very well together, we had good ideas and we knew how to execute them," recalls Correyero. The following year, they attended the 'New Space España' congress, organized by Alén Space in Vigo. "During a round table, an attendee raised his hand and asked: 'Why isn't anyone talking about electric propulsion?' That's when we realized that there was a need and we had a lot to say, and if anyone can do that in Spain, it's us," they declared in an interview with Emprendedores, which has already been discussed on this website. 

Ponicode, coding's best friends

Thanks to the power of artificial intelligence, Ponicode provides tools to create robust solutions and effortlessly maintain code quality over time.

After addressing the crucial problem of organization and thorough testing to ensure that the various functions of a program execute as expected and thus limit the number of bugs in production applications, Ponicode attacks another key issue in enterprise development: the quality of code produced by the various developers.

"Poorly adapted metrics, tedious processes, unmotivated teams: code quality has been inadequate and porous for decades. The cost of bad code is skyrocketing and companies are desperately trying to shift course to the left," they argue.

Hence Ponicode's ambition is to reconcile quality with creativity and speed. Its tools impact a code quality strategy from day one and for the rest of the life of the code base. The goal is to become the world's best coding partner and make code quality the new normal.

The company already has a community of 14,067 users, with a presence in 140 countries and have helped generate more than 307,000 unit tests.

Internxt, a respectful internet

Internxt is working to create an Internet that is user and environmentally friendly. That is, an alternative to the network of networks that respects privacy and is safe to use. The idea belongs to the young Valencian Fran Villalba Segarra and the solution in the cloud, which uses blockchain technology, which allows encrypted files to be uploaded and then fragmented into small pieces. Only the user has the key to decrypt the fragmented files, a system known as zero-knowledge encryption.

The ultimate purpose is to launch on the market an alternative to solutions such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Apple iCloud which have permission to access the user's data and then use it for their own benefit, albeit anonymously. 

Tunefork: the best sound experience

Tunefork has developed a customized audio technology that delivers a superior sound experience, natural voice quality and improved intelligibility for better communication. Tunefork is an audio personalization technology software that delivers an optimal listening experience. 

Its founders, CEO Tomer Shor and CTO Yoav Blau, have people close to them with hearing disabilities - Tomer's father and Yoav's wife. Their struggle with everyday activities, such as phone conversations, watching TV and listening to music, motivated Tomer and Yoav to look for ways to improve the quality of life for similarly affected people.

Tunefork has won dozens of major awards in local and international start-up competitions and has attracted major investors in Israel, Europe and the United States. To this must be added the new award garnered at the latest edition of South Summit 2021 in the Consumer Trends category. The company has offices in Ra'anana, Tel Aviv and a development center in Jerusalem. 

South Summit Winners

All the startups listed in this article correspond to the winners of the different verticals of the latest edition of South Summit, the global startup competition held in Madrid on October 5,6 and 7, with the list of winning startups and their respective verticals as follows: Symba, final winner after also taking first place in Education; Alerion, in Energy & Sustainability; Ponicode, in Digital Business; Internxt, in Connectivity & Data; Tunefork, in Consumer Trends; ienai Space, in Industry 4.0; Idoven, in Health & Wellbeing; Wheel the World, in Travel & Tourism, and Weecover, in Fintech & Insurtech.