Three circular economy startups won Know Hub Ignition and will travel to Riverside, California, to explore its ecosystem

THREE CIRCULAR ECONOMY STARTUPS WON KNOW HUB IGNITION AND WILL TRAVEL TO RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA, TO EXPLORE ITS ECOSYSTEM

Drop it, Beloop and Bioproc were the winners of the third edition of the Know Hub Ignition program and will travel to the United States to validate their business models.

After 10 weeks of training to validate their customer segment and value proposition, guided by national mentors from Know Hub Chile and international mentors from the University of California, Riverside, and after delivering a pitch focused on their venture’s differentiating feature, business model, commercial strategy and investment needs for global growth, three teams were selected as winners of the Know Hub Ignition 2023 program: Drop it, Beloop and Bioproc.

More than 100 teams from various Latin American countries applied to this initiative, run by Know Hub Chile in collaboration with the University of California, Riverside, supported by ANID, sponsored by Corfo, and backed by Lockheed Martin and CircularTec. Of these, 28 teams were selected to pitch to the Know Hub Chile evaluation panel, which chose the 10 teams that advanced to the training phase.

After the training phase, three teams were chosen to move on to the final phase of the program, which includes an international immersion period in the Riverside, California, ecosystem.

All three winning teams are developing circular economy projects. Bioproc contributes to gas and odor decontamination processes through a biological filtration unit with an automatic electrochemical biofilter system. Drop it is a venture that offers an innovative transformation platform, using science to manufacture mass-consumption products with a lower water and carbon footprint by encapsulating a wide range of products. And Beloop is a circular analysis software tool that helps reduce environmental impact through the eco-design of new packaging systems.

Business model validation

The winning teams have the support of CircularTec to travel to the city of Riverside, California, in the United States, to validate their business models using the I-Corps methodology. In November they will take part in this learning process, supported by the University of California, Riverside team as well as its network of mentors and investors.

Each team will have a work agenda and contact networks to conduct interviews with relevant experts and potential partners. This phase culminates in a final pitch by the teams to an international investment fund linked to the University of California, Riverside, which provides capital to early-stage ventures.

Óscar Astudillo, innovation coordinator at Know Hub Chile, highlights the opportunity for these three Chilean projects to pitch and connect with investors in the United States, specifically in California, “and we hope to continue supporting them with a work plan that will allow them to reach the market in the short to medium term.”

“The process that is now opening up is a tremendous challenge, in which we will get to know the California market in greater depth, identifying potential to add value to the region,” says Gabriel Sanllehi of Beloop, about a challenge that, he admits, they see not only from a commercial and technical standpoint, but also as extremely important for envisioning how they can help mitigate climate change in one of the most relevant economies in the world in terms of pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the United States.

“For us, a fundamental goal is to enable industries in Latin America, but above all in the United States, to transform their operations toward more circular and regenerative methods with our tool. With that, the possibility of a sustainable world for all its inhabitants seems closer, looking ahead to the critical year of 2030,” says Sanllehi.

Nicolás Retamal of Drop It adds that science- and technology-based projects are probably the most challenging to undertake. They do not have the same timelines as more common projects, “since the so-called ‘valley of death’ lasts much longer, requiring a lot of time to achieve a minimum viable product, machinery, human resources, among other things.”

Winning a program like Know Hub Ignition, Retamal stresses, “opens the doors to a new era of innovation and development, accompanied by the University of California, Riverside and the best scientific minds, to reach a new generation of solutions, with applications we perhaps can’t even imagine. We are very excited about what the future holds for us, full of confidence and dreams.”