Hello and happy 2022!

Today's main headlines:

• Payflow gets €8M to expand in EU & LATAM 🌎

• Wallbox makes waves in North America 🏈

• ES food tech startup investment grows 220% 🚀

Barcelona at the forefront of the sustainable food revolution?

This week’s intro I want to focus on food 🥗, or rather food tech. From the Roca Brothers to Jordi Cruz 👨‍🍳 and a total of 20 Michelin star restaurants in Barcelona, Catalonia has long been a region synonymous with an incredible food scene. It’s fitting then that Barcelona is also home to some revolutionary food tech startups that provide innovative solutions and products to facilitate a transition to a more sustainable diet.

With a few being featured in today’s edition, I thought it would be fitting to shine the spotlight at a few of them:

• Heura: Mediterranean plant-based meat, including beef, pork and chicken. Their products are available in almost every supermarket in Spain now and Clemens from our team swears by their 🍗 “chicken” products. So take his word for it & give it a try :)

• Novameat: Forget 3D printing, here’s 3D meat printing! Using their patented texturizing technology, their line up includes steak 🥩 & pork super-hybrids made with lab-grown animal cells, plant-based ingredients, fungi, algae and spirulina.

• Real Deal Milk: What sounds like an indie rock band is actually a startup leading the milk revolution. If you’re hooked on cheese 🧀 & can’t live without it, their lab-grown cheese might be your plant-based alternative. And they’re also already working on other plant-based dairy products.

While some products from Heura are already widely available in Spain, I have yet to figure out where to get the other two brands' food (if you know, give me a shout!). Anyway, it’s great to see Barcelona developing so many innovative food solutions to protect our planet 🌍 & hopefully there is more to come.

👉 You may also like our previous Barcinno article on this subject: 10 Barcelona Food-tech Startups You Don’t Want To Miss

That's it, eat well & have a great week :)

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Startup & Investment News

Barcelona investment news

• Salary-advance fintech startup Payflow banks an €8M Series A funding round to boost Europe & Latin America expansion

• New startup Kanguro, who aim to prevent missed deliveries with intelligent mailboxes, close a €1M first round 

• Sport, cultural and non-profit management system creators Berrly secure €250K

Barcelona startup news

• European Tech School partners with Nomadic Labs to deepen blockchain training

• Wallbox will launch in Canada starting with their best-selling Pulsar Plus charger

• - Wallbox to air its first-ever live TV ad during the US Super Bowl

• Travel tech Exoticca’s 2021 numbers are in: record sales of €75M representing 130% YoY growth

• ​​Proptech startup Psquared invests €6M in a building in 22@ to turn it into a green HQ

• Fintech startup BitBase to open first physical store in Portugal with crypto ATMs

• Feminine hygiene startup Sensual Intim to expand into the UK market 

• Telefónica's Wayra invested €2.3M into 19 Spanish tech startups in 2021, 9 are from Barcelona

• Madrid’s Freshis, the first Spanish startup to deliver produce from field to table in under an hour, will launch in BCN

Spanish investment news

• Investment in Spanish foodtech startups exceeds 220% in 2021

• Valencian e-charger developers V2C close €1M round

• Galician fintech startup Livetopic secures €600K

• Madrid-based mobile gaming firm Lab Cave acquired by UK app management solution Airnow

VC, investment & crowdfunding news

• Roca teams with Alantra to invest €25M over 5 years with priority for eco startups

• Kibo Ventures were one of the investors in German proptech Evernest’s €11.5M Series A round 

• Acciona president José Manuel Entrecanales steps down from JME Ventures leaving his son to take over the role 

• Arcano and Blue Bull Ventures end their collaboration with the latter to specialize in digital business models and tech

• Barcelona-based private equity firm Miura Partners acquires leading Spanish and LATAM edtech platform Educaedu

Open calls, accelerator news & incubator stories

• Demium closes 2021 with €7.2M invested in 68 startups and divestments of €4.4M

• Antai Venture Builder will take part in Glovo-DeliveryHero deal and exchange their shares

• Juan Roig's Lanzadera accelerator adds 54 new startups and exceeds €20M investment

• Parlem Telecom and Inveready join forces for new accelerator aimed at tech sector startups based in Catalonia, Balearics and Valencia

• Catalonia, Madrid and Castile & León chosen to launch incubators for aerospace projects 

• Meet the 7 startups selected by AticcoLab for its 3rd acceleration program

Barcelona startup & entrepreneur profiles & interviews:

• Elliott Locke (abroaden): the first wealth-building platform for people living abroad

• Novameat: the hybrid ‘blue’ steak set to change the whole-cut alternative meat market

• Octavi Uya: co-founder and CEO of boat rental platform Nautal on setting up a startup

• Oscar Pierre: ​​profile by CincoDías about the Glovo founder & CEO

• Real Deal Milk: aiming to create the ‘Tesla of lab-grown cheese’

• Wefeel: couples app to have fun and improve relationships

Tech News

Tech news in Barcelona:

• Maersk opens logistics center at Port of Barcelona

• A team from the UPC will test their autonomous delivery robot in Barcelona

• Almirall and IRB Barcelona (Institute for Research in Biomedicine) announce research collaboration to discover novel molecular glue therapeutics for severe skin diseases

• Luxury proptech firm Pacaso chooses Costa del Sol for its expansion outside the US

• Sanitas and Basque startup collab start their mask recycling initiative in Barcelona dental clinics 

Tech news in Spain:

• Spain’s innovative eco startups are leading the European climate tech boom 

• Mastercard launches tourism innovation hub in Madrid

• Bizum’s 2021 numbers show exponential growth but revenue only represents 0.002% of total operations

• UK neobank Revolut inaugurates European license to offer Spanish customers up to €100K deposit protection

• Telefonica, Indra and Inetum were the greatest beneficiaries of digital initiatives and contracts from the public sector

• Alexa voice assistant had an outage in Spain and other EU countries but issue has seemingly been fixed already

• Estonian urban mobility firm Bolt is set to accelerate presence in Spain after €628M investment

Politics, Legal & Economics

• Spain in line for an additional €7B from EU Recovery Fund to underpin revival

• Spanish government is planning to modify social security fees for freelancers for 2023 and beyond; those earning under €1,125 gross would be better off, everyone else would face a price hike

• Spain returns to pre-pandemic employment levels thanks to 776K new jobs in 2021 

• Spain moves to regulate crypto-asset advertising for fear of financial system risks

Good Reads

• Co-founder of BCN’s SocialCar’s shares her thoughts on the new Startup Law

• From staff meetings in McDonald’s to €230M: the history of Glovo

• The 4 reasons why Travelperk became Spain’s newest unicorn 

• El Referente’s list of Spain’s present and soon-to-be unicorns 

• The 6 ex-Cabify employees who went on to launch their own startups 

• Former Deliveroo workers discuss the real reasons the company departed from Spain

• Spain’s rising energy poverty: A cautionary tale for Europe

Good Videos & Podcasts

• Interview with Eduard Castañeda, co-founder of Wallbox

• Interview with Joaquin Cuenca Abela from Freepik

• Interview with Diego Bestard, co-founder of Urbanitae

• Interview with business angel Tom Horsey

• Interview with Nacho Mas of Startup Valencia

• Itnig podcast “All about blockchain in 2022: Web 3.0, NFTs and DeFi”

Great Events

This wek:

• Wed, 26 Jan @18:30: StartupGrind BCN with Carlos Cruz (Iyi Events, FuckUp Nights BCN)

• Thu, 27 Jan @18:00: Afterwork Pier01

Upcoming:

• Mon-Thu, 28 Feb - 3 Mar: Mobile World Congress 2022

• Mon-Thu, 28 Feb - 3 Mar: 4YFN

See the full event calendar here & add your event here.

Jobs

• UserActive is recruiting a Senior Product Designer (UI/UX)

• Unnax is hiring a Financial Controller

• Demium is looking for a Startup Regional Manager

• Payfit is recruiting a Research Ops

• Grupo Mediapro is hiring an Innovation Manager

• CodeOp is looking for a Manager Strategic Partnerships

• eDreams is hiring an SEO Content Marketing Specialist

• Brickpro is recruiting a Head of Marketing & Growth

• SocialPoint is looking for a Growth & Innovation Marketing Manager

• Oliva is hiring a:

• - Senior Full-Stack Engineer

• - Senior DevOps Engineer

• Netcentric is looking for several IT positions