Entrepreneurship & Startups
03 May 2023
Entrepreneurship & Startups
EIF and BBVA sign €200 million guarantee agreement to support startups with innovative and sustainable investment plans
The European Investment Fund (EIF) and BBVA are set to make it easier for startups with innovative and sustainable value propositions to get access to financing. The two institutions have concluded an agreement under the InvestEU guarantee programme whereby the EIF will grant a €200 million guarantee to enable BBVA Spark (BBVA’s specialised startup initiative) to strengthen its support for startups, helping them with their expansion plans.
08 Nov 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
When innovation resides in a building: the past, present and future of the Torre Bizkaia
From the former headquarters of BBVA in Bilbao, the B Accelerator Tower entrepreneurship centre serves as a meeting point for financial institutions, entrepreneurs and investors. A space for conceiving the services and solutions of the future that does not forget its past: the walls of the Torre Bizkaia bear witness to the innovation of the last few decades.
18 Oct 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Garanti BBVA and Bogaziçi University launch online training platform to support women entrepreneurs
The BBVA Turkish unit will offer the first online training session for the Women Entrepreneurs Academy of Türkiye, in collaboration with Boğaziçi University Lifelong Education Center (BÜYEM).
11 Oct 2022
Several innovation hubs across Latin America paint a picture of a bubbling but unevenly distributed entrepreneurial landscape: Brazil's biggest city accumulates a growing number of unicorns, while Lima is trying to carve out a niche for itself. With sectors such as fintech and e-commerce leading innovation and growing support from investors, Latin America is putting on a strong show on the international stage.
08 Aug 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Mental wellbeing for entrepreneurs: keys to restoring mental health on holiday
Anxiety, stress or fatigue are some of the problems that startup creators often face. Summer can be a good time to focus on how important it is to protect your emotional wellbeing and strike a balance before getting back to the routine. Learning to manage failure, knowing how to delegate and enjoying time to disconnect are some of the things that experts recommend for taking care of mental health.
12 Jul 2022
BBVA recently presented BBVA Spark, its full financial services proposition for innovative, high growth companies in their different stages of growth. Spark provides these companies with all their financial needs within the same place, and gives them access to sophisticated financing products, such as venture debt and growth loans. To do so, BBVA Spark will offer them a unique relationship management model with a team of experts who speak their language.
13 Jun 2022
During the closing day of South Summit, BBVA revealed that it is preparing a complete range of financial services adapted to the different stages of growth of startups and scaleups. “We want to be the bank for high-growth companies and finance them,” said Roberto Albaladejo, Head of Banking for Growth Companies, who added that there is a “great opportunity” to help them and build “long-term relationships” with them.
09 Jun 2022
Garanti BBVA is supporting an important space for women entrepreneurs in Türkiye. The bank is joining forces with the Women in Trade Platform, which was launched by KAGİDER (Women Entrepreneurs Association of Türkiye), to support women entrepreneurs who contribute to the development of the Turkish economy.
08 Jun 2022
At the South Summit, BBVA presents the BBVA Virtual Space, an immersive environment with which the bank wants to explore new ways of interacting with customers through the metaverse. This development, which allows experimenting how a banking service based on virtual reality could be, is also the protagonist of a 'hackathon' in which people are invited to offer new features or virtual experiences.
20 Apr 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
BBVA invests in Leadwind fund to boost the growth of technology startups
BBVA will invest a total of 15 million euros in Leadwind, a venture capital fund managed by K Fund. In this first phase, the fund will raise 140 million euros to support technology companies in Spain, Portugal and Latin America.
11 Apr 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Propel invests in Truora, the Latin American startup that offers authentication solutions on WhatsApp
Truora has raised $15 million in a series A funding round led by Propel, the fund that manages BBVA’s fintech investments, and Acel - one of the main investors in technology and the Internet. This new injection of capital will allow Truora to reinforce its expansion in Mexico with its solution to verify users through WhatsApp.
08 Mar 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Garanti BBVA celebrates the 15th edition of Turkey's Women Entrepreneur Competition
Garanti BBVA in collaboration with Ekonomist magazine and the Turkish Association of Female Entrepreneurs (KAGİDER) recently celebrated the 15th edition of the Women Entrepreneur Competition. During the awards ceremony on March 3rd, the winners of the four leading categories were announced.
14 Feb 2022
Entrepreneurship & Startups
From financial education to smarter sales: take a look at the startups making waves in innovation
Promoting open banking with APIs, retaining digital customers with artificial intelligence and enhancing traceability in logistics with blockchain are the technological solutions devised by five startups that have run pilots with BBVA Open Innovation. Now they are identifying their next steps to tackle the challenges ahead.
22 Dec 2021
Fintech
The Spanish fintech innovation map: a virtual tour of the most entrepreneurial regions of 2021
The Spanish entrepreneurial ecosystem has grown and matured this year, with the fintech sector leading the way and a considerable boost from investors. While Madrid and Barcelona continue to dominate the national landscape, the Basque Country, Valencia and Malaga have increasingly prominent roles to play, and regions like the Canary Islands and Galicia are working hard to make a name for themselves. A tour of these areas shows the wealth of opportunities for innovation and the diversity of sectors.
07 Dec 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Carlos Torres Vila meets with entrepreneurs of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation, a leading contributor in Latin America
On the occasion of his visit to Peru and Colombia, BBVA's Chair took the opportunity to learn firsthand about the impact of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation’s efforts and to announce the winners of the 'Transformando Realidades (Transforming Realities)' scholarships, which help children of vulnerable microentrepreneurs pursue a college degree. "Meeting these entrepreneurs face to face is a life lesson," said Carlos Torres Vila, who recalled the Microfinance Foundation’s pledge to originate €7 billion in productive microcredits between 2021 and 2024 to support vulnerable entrepreneurs.
29 Nov 2021
Garanti BBVA and Hepsiburada, two representatives of the banking and e-commerce sector in Turkey, are collaborating to strengthen the power of Turkey's female entrepreneurs. An alliance that marks the first e-commerce platform that supports female entrepreneurship with projects such as Garanti BBVA and The Technology Power program for Entrepreneurial Women, which has been leading efforts to empower female entrepreneurs for 15 years.
24 Nov 2021
Garanti BBVA joins Ecording to plant 100,000 seeds for female entrepreneurs and raise awareness of the importance of their work.
16 Nov 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
BBVA and Anthemis invest in startup Greenspark and its technology platform for business sustainability
Greenspark’s technological solutions allow large companies and SMEs to offset their environmental impact by integrating into their websites services to plant trees for each order received, or clean up ocean plastic for each new subscriber to their newsletter. BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership leads the first round of financing for this British startup.
29 Oct 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Garanti BBVA and KAGIDER come together once again at the 2021 Meeting of Women Entrepreneurs
After 15 years of supporting female entrepreneurship and the participation of women in the business world, Garanti BBVA has once again collaborated with KAGİDER at the Meeting of Women Entrepreneurs.
26 Oct 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
BBVA and 500 Global create a platform to identify disruptive and sustainable startups and technologies for financial services
BBVA and 500 Global have signed an agreement for 500 Global to develop an Intelligence Platform that would support BBVA’s ability to identify new startups, technologies and emerging trends with the potential to impact the future of the most innovative industries, and by extension, the finance sector. The new BBVA-500 Intelligence Platform will attempt to promote new collaborations and pilot projects between startups and the bank.
13 Oct 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Radio COPE travels to Colombia to discover the work of BBVA Microfinance Foundation
La Linterna, the radio program directed by the renowned journalist Ángel Expósito, has been switched on from the headquarters of Bancamía, the BBVA Microfinance Foundation's entity in Colombia. The objective: to shed light on the reality of the most vulnerable populations in Latin America - those exposed to inequality, which, far from improving, has increased as a result of the pandemic.
11 Oct 2021
Garanti BBVA strives for sustainable development and the participation of women in economic activity. Now, the bank is celebrating the 15th anniversary of its comprehensive and continuous approach to supporting women entrepreneurs.
05 Oct 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Carlos Torres Vila encourages South Summit entrepreneurs to innovate in green technologies
BBVA's Chairman called on the entrepreneurial community to “continue to be brave and invest in green technologies” during his participation in the South Summit, where he stressed the need to continue supporting innovation, especially in the field of digitization and sustainability. “We need to decarbonize in 50 years, and that is going to require a lot of investment and innovation in technologies that do not exist today,” insisted the BBVA Chairman at this conference dedicated to startups and whose opening ceremony was presided over by His Majesty the King.
16 Sep 2021
Tolkido founder Can Yıldız took part in Garanti BBVA’s Film Gibi Girişimler program through an interview series dedicated to discussing the future with new entrepreneurs and promoting social innovation projects.
02 Sep 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Backcasting for startups, a strategic bridge from the future to the present
We cannot confidently predict the future, but we can build it. Future studies or research in futurology are one of the best tools to guide our personal projects and wishes, as well as to design the strategy for the coming years of our company or startup and therefore succeed with innovation.
05 Jul 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership invests in StepEx, a startup that facilitates access to postgraduate education
StepEx has raised £1.1 million in pre-initial funding, with the venture studio BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership being the lead investor. This startup from the UK offers an alternative system of student finance based on the estimation of their future income, to democratize access to postgraduate qualifications.
01 Jul 2021
No venture fund can reveal all its secrets, is the first thing Propel says when asked how it selects the startups in which it wants to invest. But it does recognize that there are elements that are as clear a sign as any to detect a great company.
With more than 40 companies in its portfolio, six of them considered unicorns (valued above $1 billion) and two listed on the public stock markets, Propel has become a corporate venture capital benchmark since it was founded five years ago. The book 'Transactional to Transformational - How Banks Innovate', recently published by Wiley, recounts how BBVA opted to create an independently managed fund in order to approach the most promising fintech.
06 May 2021
Entrepreneurship & Startups
Bancamía to issue €45 million in social bonds to support gender equality in Colombia
"Society owes a debt to women," said Bancamía's executive president, Miguel Ángel Charria. For this division of the BBVA Microfinance Foundation (FMBBVA), providing service to women has been a priority since the branch was created in 2008 as the first microfinance bank in Colombia. Today, Bancamía supports 1.4 million micro-entrepreneurs, most of them women. The bank seeks to help its customers to overcome the crisis caused by the pandemic through the issuance of social bonds with a focus on gender equality, for an amount of 200 billion pesos, about 45 million euros.
03 May 2021
BBVA USA and the Houston Rockets teamed up to send “care packages” to small businesses in the Houston area impacted by the pandemic over the past year.