Costa Vella Industrial Estate, in Santiago de Compostela, hosted this Tuesday the presentation of the first call of BioIncubaTech, the new accelerator for the biotechnology sector in Galicia. The initiative, to which proposals can be submitted until November 15, will encourage the creation of technology-based companies, and will offer support for those initiatives that need to improve and innovate their processes in this area, especially in the health and health sectors. food technologies
Bioincubatech is led by the University of Santiago de Compostela, through the Valuation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship area, co-financed by the INCYDE Foundation within the ERDF program, and by the Galician Innovation Agency (GAIN). The Chamber of Commerce of Santiago and Uninova also collaborate. It is the first bioincubator in Galicia and the only one in Spain specialized in health and in the agri-food sector. It is, therefore, a unique project in the Iberian Peninsula to attract entrepreneurial talent and research results from around the world to Galicia.
In order to facilitate the growth of the participating projects, this new accelerator will offer a centralized infrastructure, with high capacities based on services of high added value, which, with a capable team and with great experience both in the scientific / technological field and in the business, provides a set of coordinated services for business acceleration.
Bioincubatech will advise the initiatives selected in the different stages of development
Each of the initiatives selected in the different stages of development (pre-incubation, incubation or acceleration) will be able to access a specific work program in which specific needs and characteristics will be taken into account. Thus, they will have available work spaces, advice on technology transfer, financing, business model, internationalization or communication.
In the act, chaired by the rector of the USC, Antonio López, participated the director of the Galician Agency of Innovation (GAIN), Patricia Argerey Vilar; the mayor of Santiago, Xosé Sánchez Bugallo; the director of FEDER projects at the INCYDE Foundation, Natalia Vázquez, and the second vice president of the Santiago Chamber of Commerce, José Carballo García.
Patricia Argerey explained that this incubator is one of the milestones of the Galician Biotechnology Boosting Strategy, launched in 2016, and ending in 2020, whose objectives and execution have already been achieved almost 100%. “I trust that BioIncubaTech will be able to attract the best business projects to Galicia and have the possibility of consolidating and growing in Galicia, making our biotechnology sector even stronger and placing the European scale better,” Argerey said.
In addition, Bioincubatech contributes to strengthening the entrepreneurship support ecosystem in Galicia, increasing the offer of infrastructures and incubation and acceleration services in the biotechnology sector, and integrating into the StartInGalicia platform that encompasses all of the entrepreneurship support services of the Consellería de Economía, Emprego e Industria. Patricia Argerey also stressed that the creation of this high-capacity centralized infrastructure, which offers high value-added services, provides new capabilities to the biotechnology business fabric, thus increasing its ability to compete internationally.
In this sense, the incubator joins the work that is already being done in the sector with clusters such as Bioga, Clusaga and Health, also involved in this project. As Argerey stressed, the field of biotechnology constitutes “a priority sector” for the Xunta de Galicia, and thus place Galicia as a key international player in the biotechnological value chain. In addition to this initiative, the Xunta de Galicia supports other entrepreneurship and acceleration programs in this field such as Business Factory Food, focused on the food industry, Agrobiotech Innovation, focused on biotechnology, agri-food and biomass, or the Early Discovery Incubator Drugs of the Kaertor and Janssen Foundation.