Second edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, an entrepreneurship program for young people with ideas to mitigate climate change.
- Atom is conceived as a device capable of generating and storing fuel for homes and businesses from hydrogen extracted from water.
- imagin will take the winners to Silicon Valley during the month of July to provide them with training for the development of their idea and to visit reference innovation centers, with visits to companies such as Google, Apple, Netflix and Meta, among others.
- More than 1,700 young people from all over Spain have participated in the second call organized by imagin to promote entrepreneurial ideas capable of generating a positive impact on the planet.
Atom, a project to generate fuel through hydrogen from water, has been the winner of the second edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, the imagin initiative that supports young people with entrepreneurial ideas to mitigate climate change. Through this program, imagin, the digital services and lifestyle platform promoted by CaixaBank, offers training and tools to a generation of young people with environmental awareness and entrepreneurial concerns so that they can develop projects capable of generating a positive impact on the planet .
The winning project, devised by three Barcelona students, has been chosen from among the 500 teams registered in the imaginPlanet Challenge, which in this edition has had more than 1,700 young participants. During the last six months, imagin has offered all of them a specialized training program through face-to-face and telematic sessions on sustainability and entrepreneurship, and has provided them with tools and resources to give shape to their ideas.
From among all the participants, imagin has selected 10 finalist teams, who have presented their projects to a jury of experts made up of professionals linked to benchmark companies in sustainability and members of the imagin team. The initiative has also had the involvement of a total of 4,800 imagers , who have voted for their favorite project through digital channels. Finally, the professional jury and the users of the imagin app chose Atom as the winning idea of ​​this second edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, the project devised by three engineering students from Barcelona: Lucas Vicen (19 years old), Anna Martin (20 years ) and Marcel Rovira (20 years old).
After winning the award, as a starting point to start the incubation phase of the project and create its minimum viable product (MVP), the Atom team will have the opportunity to travel to Silicon Valley during the month of July, specifically to the center of innovation of the Imagine Creativity Center, directed by the entrepreneur Xavier Verdaguer. For 10 days, the creators of Atom will participate in an incubation program for their project, visit companies such as Google, Pixar, Airbnb, Twitter, Meta, Apple, Netflix, among others, and receive training from Stanford and Berkeley universities.
After the incubation process that starts in Silicon Valley, Atom will present its project in a Demo Day format session before investors, business angels , accelerator platforms and leading organizations in the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The project will also have the support of imagin in the acceleration phase to promote it and help it become an initiative capable of generating a positive impact on the planet, along the lines of the two winning projects of the first edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, EcoDeliver and Kidalos, which are already part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem and have been established as companies.
Atom: fuel from hydrogen in water
The project is conceived as a hydrogen fuel generator and storage device available at any time of the day. The device uses renewable energy to separate water into its two components, oxygen and hydrogen. The extracted hydrogen is then stored to be used when needed as a fuel energy source. Hydrogen contains three times more energy than gasoline and when burned it turns back into water, generating zero CO2 emissions.
Atom is a project designed to adapt to the needs of users, whether in a private home or in a business, being a globally scalable idea. The objective of the project is to accelerate the transition towards renewable energies in order to put an end to climate change.
Special mention to the Flou project
Among the 10 finalist teams of the second edition of the imaginPlanet Challenge, imagin and the program’s jury awarded a special mention to the Flou project, by students from Loyola University (Seville), Almudena Dujat, Julia Polo and Pedro Roble.
Flou is an idea linked to reducing food waste and is conceived as a smart fridge that controls the expiration date of products and, based on this, recommends a preferred consumption.
imaginPlanet, a commitment to sustainability
The imaginPlanet Challenge is part of the set of products, services, content, agreements and initiatives based on sustainability that imagin, through imaginPlanet, develops to generate a positive impact on the planet and society as a whole. Through this initiative, imagin reinforces its clear commitment to sustainability, which is one of the pillars of its strategy. The imagin sustainability plan implies that the entire business model and its entire organization are committed to criteria of coherence, social and environmental commitment, transparency and innovation.
In this sense, for example, the incentives for new clients replace the traditional gift with sustainable actions, such as reforestation or donations to charitable causes. Likewise, in addition to promoting awareness of sustainability among its users, imagin internally promotes the adoption of sustainable habits in its physical spaces and the involvement of its employees in social and environmental causes through programs in collaboration with leading organizations.
imagin’s sustainability model has achieved B Corp certification, which guarantees compliance with the highest standards of social and environmental performance, public transparency and corporate responsibility of the company to balance economic benefit with social purpose. imagin was the first mobile -only financial services platform to achieve this certification.
3.7 million imagers
imagin is a lifestyle platform promoted by CaixaBank that offers digital, financial and non-financial services that help its users, mostly young people under the age of 30, in their daily lives and in their future projects. It currently has a community of 3.7 million users, a figure that is constantly growing thanks to the wide range of content and services -a large part of which is free to access-, the ease of registration and the creation of various levels of linking, which , unlike traditional banks, do not necessarily imply registration as a financial client.
imagin’s digital content is organized around five major verticals: music (imaginMusic), video games (imaginGames), trends (imaginCafé), technology (imaginShop) and sustainability (imaginPlanet). Likewise, imagin offers special experiences and advantages in areas such as travel or urban mobility.
In addition, the imagin application develops a range of financial products to meet the savings and financing needs of young people who have entered adulthood and who are beginning to have their first income and their own lifestyle projects. In this sense, imagin maintains the characteristics that have made it a banking leader for the young public: mobile-only operations (services are provided exclusively through the app , without branches and without a website, which only performs informative functions), without commissions for the user and with its own language, simple and clear, especially suitable for direct communication with young people.
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