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In total, $37 million were allocated in support of four entrepreneurs that offered solutions for the health and economic crisis, focusing on Economy and Employment; Health; Education; and Community.
After a month in the search and selection process, Fundación Chile, through ChileGlobal Ventures –its venture capital area-, announced the results of the call for proposals “COVID- Colaboración y Vida”(Collaboration and Life), that seeks to finance innovative solutions to help address the country’s health and economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The call was developed with the contribution of Entel, CMPC, and Microsoft Chile, in addition to the support of Sofofa and Corfo. It welcomed a total of 560 applications in less than 3 weeks, from which 4 winners were selected, based on previously defined focal themes (Health; Economy and Employment; Education, and Community).
The winners are:
Health
- Lightwash: A project that disinfects medical staff’s clothing and personal protective equipment (PPE) by using UVC light.
Economy and Employment
- Consultok: An online platform designed to provide support and guidance for entrepreneurs and professionals, counting with the assistance of experts in several areas.
Education
- MIDE: Helps national rural schools maintaining online school continuity through an application, which allows them to work with guidebooks, essays, or interactive evaluations, with an internet connection from a mobile phone.
Comunity
- Localshop: a platform that allows the connection between neighborhood businesses and their neighbors, using local shoppers.
The winners will receive a total of $37 million that Entel, CMPC, and Microsoft will donate so they can implement their innovative solutions to meet the needs of the population within the current context.
Marcos Kulka, Fundación Chile’s CEO, stated that “the results of this initiative reflect the key role of entrepreneurs during times of crisis in designing agile and scalable initiatives and solutions with social impact. Now more than ever, we must deal with these moments collaboratively, joining public and private efforts, with a long-term vision, wisdom, making the most out of different technologies, and focusing on generating value and life in order to transform this current crisis into opportunities for a better future for Chile.”
For his part, Entel’s Innovation Manager, Carlos Rodríguez, affirmed that “at Entel we know that in Chile we have great human talent and an important capacity to reinvent ourselves. We are very pleased with the results of this call, both in terms of its scope as in the solutions that have won. We are confident that they will contribute to improve the lives of many people in fundamental aspects such as health, education, employment and the community during these difficult times.”
The Innovation Manager at Empresas CMPC, Felipe Alcalde, added that “a crisis of this magnitude requires that new actors come forward with greater strength proposing solutions. We are very satisfied with the winning projects and how they are using technology to tackle this global challenge. It is now that we need to spread the word among all the entrepreneurs who applied so that the new solutions can spread and be tested and scaled. Today more than ever we need to innovate and collaborate.”
Meanwhile, Wilson Pais, Innovation and Technology Director at Microsoft Chile, said that “at Microsoft we believe that the future is not only a world with more automation and robotics; it is a future with new types of businesses, activities and possibilities, a world that can potentially and profoundly benefit regions like Latin America, where actors such as SMEs and startups play a fundamental role in the economic development”.
