Red Eléctrica collaborates with the Regional Ministry of Education of the Castile and Leon Regional Government and Startup OLÉ to launch and develop #innovacionfrentealvirus (Innovation Against Virus), a global initiative that seeks innovative ideas and projects to minimise the possible effects of the current alert situation generated by COVID-19.

For this purpose, an innovative technological platform and community have been created with the purpose of helping society to face the new health and economic emergency situation. This is, therefore, a call for innovation, creativity and the hope of creating a different community that moves forward together into the future.

#innovacionfrentealvirus is addressed to universities, research groups, spin-offs, innovators, startups, scaleups, corporations, investors, innovative SMEs, public institutions, associations, media and all entities that want to collaborate by forming a multidisciplinary community.

Participation for projects and ideas allows individual or team registration in three different categories:

• Projects at the ideas stage, aimed at students, startups.
• R&D&i groups.
• Innovative startups or SMEs.

We have defined several types of modalities in the form of challenges closely related to the impact of the virus, such as the following:

• Healthcare/Health.
• Social/Humanitarian.
• Sustainability, water and energy.
• Education.
• Rural (agri-food, tourism, travel, etc.).
• New businesses.
• Media.
• The project/idea will be presented through a 3 minute pitch video that must be uploaded when registering along with the details that define each project/idea.

The registration period for projects/ideas and experts/mentors will be open until April 17th. After the mentoring sessions, 24 winning projects associated with the different categories and modalities/challenges will be selected.

The selected projects will have a direct pass to the sixth edition of Startup OLÉ 2020 which will allow them to connect with a large number of investors, corporations, institutions and media, with the aim of expanding their investment possibilities, increasing the number of clients and media exposure. As part of the award they will be provided with exposure in the different media that collaborate with the initiative. All participating companies will also be awarded 5,000 euros in AWS Actívate credits.