Socure and GridMarkets Win 2014 BBVA Open Talent Awards

Source and GridMarkets have won the 2014 North America and Rest of World BBVA Open Talent Awards in the respective categories of New Banking and Digital Life. The winning prize for both startups will be a contract worth 30,000 euros with BBVA to test their respective products or services. Mexico and the United States were the protagonists in this year’s contest, which included participants from as far afield as India, South Africa, Russia or Singapore.

(Release originally appeared 17 Oct 2014 via BBVA)

Socure, an artificial intelligence system that protects against online identity fraud, enabling users to cut costs and time, has won the New Banking category for the North American and Rest of World BBVA Open Talent competition. Epiphyte came in second for this category with its virtual money movement service designed for financial institutions.

In the Digital Life category, the winning startup is GridMarkets, a platform that allows users to share the excess capacity of the cloud throughout the world, in fields such as engineering, finances and animation. The runner up is Autochilando, an application or drivers in Mexico City, which provides information related to cars and traffic: workshops, traffic radar, details on insurance policies and traffic jams.

“The global scope of BBVA Open Talent 2014 was on display in the North American and Rest of World edition more than the others”, said Gustavo Vinacua, Director of the Innovation Centers and Open Innovation at BBVA. “BBVA Open Talent 2014 shows how digital transformation constitutes an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs to reshape industries, thereby creating new customer experiences that make our lives easier and simpler as we move forward as a society”, added Vinacua.

These startups join the winners of the Central-South America and European BBVA Open Talent 2014 contests, after defending their projects at the Next Bank Americas event in Mexico City.

The panel was made up of representatives from BBVA, as well as investors and entrepreneurs. Furthermore, this year those attending the Next Bank event were able to choose the best pitches, and their votes accounted for 20% of the panel’s final score.

Online voting

BBVA Open Talent 2014 has now completed its list of winners and runners-up, to which we only have to add the startup most voted online.

The online voting starts on October 17. Anyone- except for those registered in the contest – will be able to vote for as many BBVA Open Talent 2014 final projects as they wish. Users can vote on the website of BBVA Innovation Center. The voting ends on 30 October.

The project most voted online will join the winners and runners-up at Crash Acceleration Week in New York. They will be able to pitch their projects to potential investors and business incubators, and they will also receive training advice from experts in starting new businesses.