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After a week participating in the pre-acceleration days which culminated with the finalists defending their project before a demanding jury, these are the winners of Fiebre del Sol 2.
Geogrow and Rentadrone.cl are the two winning initiatives of the second call of “Fiebre del Sol,” organised by Ayllu Solar, an initiative of SERC Chile, supported by Fundación BHP Billiton and Fundación Chile, whose objective is to attract and boost emerging businesses that have the potential to activate a global development pole around the use of resources in the Arica and Parinacota region. The call also had significant strategic support from Wakilabs Solar Hub and Chile Global Ventures.
The projects were selected from 50 startups that responded to the call, with five finalists chosen who had to defend their project at the Pitch Day held last Friday at the Hotel Diego de Almagro, where they were evaluated by a demanding jury, composed by local and national experts in entrepreneurship and solar energy.
“The quality of the startups that applied for the call was very high and very high-level businesses with international outreach are being generated. The two winning ventures are novel bets and point to a great market potential that will allow them to become referents very soon,” explains Sergio Montero, coordinator of La Fiebre del Sol 2.
Lorena Cornejo, regional representative of Ayllu Solar, said that the winning projects “respond to what Ayllu Solar wants to install in the region: innovative solutions that generate an impact in the community, with a world-class team and most importantly, that use solar energy as a base solution.”
Companies can benefit from a USD 100K fund, through the Subsidio Semilla de Asignación Flexible de Innovación (SSAF-i), be part of the acceleration program of ChileGlobal Ventures, have a bonus on sales made in the first six acceleration months of up to USD 14K and be able to set up an office within the co-working space WAKI Labs, to start their business in the region.
These were the winning projects:
- Rentadrone: Rentadrone, by Julio Rejón, Ivo Tiska, and Carlos and Héctor Bastidas, is a company specialised in locating, categorising and classifying faults in solar panels using thermographic sensors and RGB cameras. This service allows to locate the typical faults in solar panels, which are identified through hot spots that are visible in the infrared spectrum. Through the thermographic inspection with drones offered by the company, the localisation time of these faults can be reduced by 97%.
- GeoGrow: Geogrow, by Manuel and Camila Santelices and Daniel Beltrán, provides 100% electric temperature control solutions to greenhouses, with heat pumps and solar side windows, both automatic and of highly-efficient energy, operated with solar plants and monitored online by an integrated web platform. This allows to improve by 80% the productive processes and generate constant crops without climatic issues being an impediment factor.
About Ayllu Solar
The Ayllu Solar project is an initiative developed by SERC-Chile, with the support of Fundación BHP and Fundación Chile as strategic partners. Its objective is to collaborate with the Arica and Parinacota Region so that the urban and rural communities in the region achieve sustainable development through the use of solar energy. The process is based on energy solutions, human capital and sustainability.
SERC Chile is comprised of Universidad de Chile, Universidad de Tarapacá, Universidad de Antofagasta, the Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez, Universidad de Concepción, the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and Fraunhofer Chile.
