• In collaboration with Dayone de CaixaBank, today the Association has celebrated two round tables about the future of Food & Beverage and HealthTech
• 15 companies have a prominent presence in the Association’s space at the event

Tech Barcelona, the private non-profit association that supports and promotes the digital and technological ecosystem of Barcelona, consolidates its commitment to collaboration between startups and large corporations. As part of the 4 Years From Now (4YFN), Tech Barcelona today held two round tables in Caixabank’s DayOne space, focused on the future of Food&Beverage and Healthtech.

The round table under the title Technological transformation and future prospects of the Food & Beverage sector opened the day with the participation of Iker Ganuza, Senior Commercial Director Foods (Snacks and Nutrition) and head of Insights at PepsiCo and Santiago Molinas, B2B ecommerce Manager & Open Innovation Lead at Unilever. Moderated by Enric Jové, CEO of McCann Worldgroup Barcelona. Topics addressed included: the impact of the pandemic on the value proposition of companies and how business strategy has evolved, placing the consumer at the center.

Asked about the relationship between large corporations and startups, Santiago Molinas pointed out that “in the end you realize the collaboration model for victory. Startups carry this model in their DNA. Now that we are in Tech Barcelona, we see how we get crazy ideas that can fit into the company. Little by little, large corporations are losing their fear”. Iker Ganuza added that “startups question the status quo in a courageous way and this generates a different corporate culture. We have to be more prepared to fail”.

This year, for the first time, 4YFN has been integrated into the Mobile World Congress (MWC) space, reaffirming the fundamental role that startups play in the mobile technology sector.

The second discussion session focused on the future of Healthtech. The roundtable featured presentations by Orlando Vergara, Reimagining LifeScience & Leadership at Novartis; Pau Rodríguez, CEO at Methinks AI; Javier Ingles, data manager at Ferrer Digital Business Experience in Spain; and Carla Zaldua, CEO & CoFounder at acceXible.

With the pandemic, mental health has been at the center of the debate. In this regard, all the participants agreed that the focus now is on reactive medicine and in the future, it will be on prevention and the relationship with the patient. Javier Ingles assured that “what technology allows us to do is to empower the patient, who will have more data, more information and more resources at his disposal”. Along these lines, Pau Rodríguez pointed out that “the most important thing (for startups) is to identify the problems or the clinical need and then expand all this so that it has a global impact. Technology accelerates the rest.

In Orlando Vergara’s words: “technology and startups will help solve problems. But what happens? It is not about supporting startups, but about collaborating and weaving alliances”. Finally, Carla Zaldúa assured that there is still a lack of resources to connect startups with large corporations. “From my experience, it is necessary to continue building bridges and creating meeting spaces to strengthen these links,” she concluded.