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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The Garanti BBVA Partners initiative, which was launched six years ago, continues its activities this year with a series of meetings with renowned experts. Balvinder Singh, who has extensive experience in directing business, social, cultural, media, and technological projects, was this month's guest.

BBVA and Anthemis are participating in the second $3.4 million funding round that Cledara recently held. The startup now has 150 clients thanks to its innovative SaaS (Software as a Service) solution to centralize payment systems in a single platform.

BBVA is partnering with technology companies to be closer to its clients, who are starting to turn to third party digital vendors to cover their financial needs. "We see these partnerships as a way of growing our customer base,” stated Carlos Torres Vila, Group Executive Chairman of BBVA, speaking at a virtual panel discussion with Marcelo Claure, CEO of Softbank, that took place on the last day of South Summit.

The World Tourism Organization and the innovation hub Wakalua, working in collaboration with companies like BBVA, have launched a competition for startups in the world of tourism to find technological and innovative solutions that respond to the sector’s sustainability challenges.

Last year, BBVA USA launched the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Contest, an initiative aimed at helping up-and-coming small businesses enhance their operations.

Acceleration programmes, like Open Innovation from BBVA helping startups from the fintech ecosystem, are an opportunity to offer tailored support that helps entrepreneurs to refine their model, boost their growth and access investment. In the case of the BBVA programme, the project is bringing to a close nine months of workshops, mentoring and support. For the bank and entrepreneurs, the initiative has provided an opportunity to learn together.

The process of choosing startups in open innovation is proving increasingly difficult in the face of the proliferation of emerging companies globally. BBVA has various scouting mechanisms, and to do this it takes into account factors such as the degree of maturity, whether the solution dovetails with the bank's needs, and the entrepreneurial team's passion.

Collaboration between banks and financial technology startups could be key for finding solutions in the new environment that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought about. The digital event ‘BBVA Open Talks Global: Fintech Post-Covid’ included how the innovation ecosystem is reacting in the various countries where BBVA is present. Where Spain is concerned, innovation has accelerated and there are already tech solutions on the table to build a post-pandemic future.

On 26 and 27 May 2020 the European Innovation Council (EIC), BBVA and Ferrovial are jointly hosting their first online EIC Corporate Day, bringing together 19 of the most innovative startups in Europe. The online EIC Corporate Days are the digital version of the physical events in where the European Commission connects Europe’s most innovative companies and innovators with C-level corporate and cross sectorial decision makers.

The coronavirus crisis may lead to a series of changes forcing many companies to rethink their business models. Startups frequently depend on funding, and some may be critically impacted. Still, others may find themselves in a stronger position thanks to their capacity to adapt to the changing landscape or because they provide digital services that have proven invaluable. Could the coronavirus crisis set the stage for the next big startup?

To continue collaborating with the ‘fintech’ ecosystem and keep in touch with startups during the quarantine period, BBVA Open Innovation teams from all over the world joined together to host the InnovaHome Festival, a series of virtual events on entrepreneurship and innovation that enable us to continue providing value to entrepreneurs while the crisis lasts.

BBVA’s Open Innovation unit is charged with ensuring the bank stays up to date with the latest fintech disruption happening anywhere in the world.

By Anita Dharapuram

On March 3, the winners of 2019 BBVA Momentum will arrive in Madrid, Spain to celebrate their entrepreneurial accomplishments and culminate this year’s program. A handful of the program’s winners hail from Turkey, Mexico, Colombia, and the United States - and one was recently recognized by Forbes magazine. 

The BBVA and Anthemis Venture Creation Partnership is helping U.K. based financial health business Wollit get off the ground with an integrated investment programme.

The Houston Rockets and BBVA USA have announced the launch of their annual Launchpad contest for Houston entrepreneurs.