TheVentureCity, a new venture and acceleration model that helps diverse founders achieve global impact, is partnering with the World Bank for its annual Innovate4Climate initiative. The venture firm will work with a select group of startups focused on developing practical solutions to climate change.
Five startups that stood out during the Innovate4Climate Pitch Hub Competition have been chosen to go through TheVentureCity’s intensive accelerator program that focuses the startups on product growth, fundraising strategies and internationalization, among other business priorities.
The accelerator with offices in Miami, Madrid, Silicon Valley and São Paulo has a large international footprint and stresses that the startups coming through its programs always possess a global mindset. That worldwide emphasis is visible in the diversity of places represented through this batch of five startups, which hail from Colombia, India, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and Spain.
“It was very inspiring to work with this unique set of mission-driven founders, solving meaningful problems,” said Andy Areitio, a fund partner at TheVentureCity. “They are building companies that will ultimately shape the evolution of our current world and of generations to come. It was also very refreshing to have such an amazing diversity of international founders.”
Each of the startups bring promising ideas to the table, like India’s A2P Energy, which converts paddy straw into sustainable products, as well as Spain’s Carbon Checkout, a software that aims to spur on carbon offset in e-commerce companies. These firms will look to benefit from TheVentureCity’s track record of growing startups and offering them global reach, as the growth accelerator has invested tens of millions of dollars in startups around the world in the past three years.
This partnership with the World Bank comes on the heels of other important allyships that TheVentureCity has established around the world, like with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). On November 17, the accelerator will host a webinar in conjunction with the IDB that is focused on creating stronger and more impactful relationships between startup founders and business executives to encourage social development.
For its part, the fourth annual Innovate4Climate event is slated to take place in Barcelona in May. TheVentureCity’s first year of involvement has already resulted in successful bootcamps and mentoring programs done virtually with the five finalists. The company will continue to impart its business-building expertise to help these international startups create lasting solutions to mitigate the effects of a changing climate.
“Working with the World Bank on the Innovate4Climate Pitch Hub startup acceleration program has allowed us to interact with brilliant entrepreneurs from around the world solving the most difficult problems caused by climate change,” said Jimena Zubiria, Vice President of People at TheVentureCity. “I was so inspired by the five finalists and their passion to build a better world for all of us … I believe it is thanks to entrepreneurs like them that our planet has the opportunity to overcome the effects of climate change.”
Disclosure: This article mentions a client of an Espacio portfolio company.
