Banking and finance startup TOQIO wins fourth Cuatrecasas Acelera accelerator program

Cuatrecasas Acelera, the accelerator program for projects based on legaltech and with a high legal complexity, has ended its fourth program by holding Demo Day. The six participating startups presented their projects to investors and business angels in a pitch and at DemoLab, a space created for the event. The event brought approximately 100 attendees from the startup ecosystem together at the Cuatrecasas Madrid office.

Cuatrecasas Acelera, a program promoted by Cuatrecasas together with Telefónica Open Future and in collaboration with Netmentora, Microbank and Alastria, focused this year’s edition on proposals with innovative solutions for business law (legaltech) and projects with a technological foundation and a high legal complexity from other areas (e.g., fintech, insurtech and regtech) that use business digitalization, and blockchain and smart-contract technology.

The winning startup, TOQIO, is a banking and finance platform that reduces the entrance barriers to business innovation in the financial sector. It helps companies of all kinds to launch financial products and services on the market swiftly and effectively. The platform allows any corporation to create its own digital bank in under six weeks, and thanks to its AI algorithms, automatically recommend financial products to its stakeholders.

The panel was made up of Spain’s main investors and players from the startup ecosystem. The panel assessed the level of innovation, the originality of the idea, the team’s dedication, as well as the viability and scalability of the business. The members of the panel were Isabel Gandoy and Pedro Gil, partners at Cuatrecasas; Francesc Muñoz, CIO of Cuatrecasas; Natalia Mayo, DayOne director at CaixaBank; Ander Michelena, founding partner of All Iron Ventures; Alberto Moratiel, head of institutional relations at ENISA; Azucena Elbaile, director of La Nave; and Agustín Touron, founder of Councilbox.

According to Francesc Muñoz, CIO at Cuatrecasas and the driving force behind Cuatrecasas ACELERA, the program’s greatest challenge lies in choosing the startups, due to their diversity and the high level of the projects: “We have a comprehensive scenario, with very interesting projects ranging from legaltech to insurtech. This makes naming a winner a difficult decision.”

Cuatrecasas partner Diana Rivera highlighted the value that startups contribute to the accelerator programs themselves and to the legal ecosystem: “This is the fourth edition in which we see that this program not only helps these companies; we our lawyers also learn a lot. They raise very specific legal questions and ask our help in developing legal frameworks, which benefits the whole ecosystem."

Eduardo Martínez, CEO and founder of TOQIO, thanked Cuatrecasas ACELERA for the boost that the program has given them: “Our experience in the accelerator program was very positive; it has helped us a lot to improve our message and make it stronger. Our company moves in the financial world where there is a lack of regulation. The legal assistance helped us to map out the future of our project, position it and differentiate it”.

During Demo Day, there was a round table on corporate venturing made up of lawyers, program collaborators and startups, and including Diana Rivera, partner at Cuatrecasas; Jesús Chapado, innovation director at Naturgy; Carlos Matiilla, cofounder and CEO of FuVeX; and Josemaria Siota, executive director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center at IESE Business School. CEO of Barrabés.biz, Luis Miguel Ciprés, moderated the session.

The experts analyzed collaborative frameworks between companies and startups, cases where corporate venturing is recommendable, models of viability and development pathways for startups.

In the framework of the Cuatrecasas Acelera program, there was also a Fast Track Program and a four-month bootcamp where the startups developed a pilot-use case together with Cuatrecasas. The projects selected for the Fast Track Program are doDOC and Closd, two legaltech solutions that will enable lawyers to increase efficiency. 

Rafael Fontana, Senior Partner of Cuatrecasas, closed Demo Day recalling the importance for companies to stay connected with entrepreneurship and innovation: “We are going to continue with the Cuatrecasas ACELERA accelerator program, which we hope to be able to continue announcing every year.”

Startups participating in fourth Cuatrecasas Acelera program

CROOWLY: a project that develops legaltech solutions and digital onboarding based on biometric tools and artificial intelligence.

DATANCIA: a startup specializing in big data analytics by developing and implementing machine learning and AI algorithms in statistical models.

ETHICHUB: a collaborative finance platform, based on blockchain technology, which puts small-scale farmers who do not have access to the banking system in contact with users worldwide.

INVIERTIS: first online market to invest in leased properties in the residential sector. A marketplace to invest in properties that already have reviewed and certified tenants, to obtain returns from day one with just a click.

LISA SEGUROS INTELIGENTES: an insurance distribution platform for professionals, freelancers and companies. It presents LISA Recycling, aimed at crowdsurance, a combination of traditional insurance and an insurance model between insured persons and reassurance.

TOQIO: a banking and finance platform that reduces the entrance barriers to business innovation in the financial sector. It helps companies of all kinds to launch financial products and services on the market swiftly and effectively. The platform allows any corporation to create its own digital bank in under six weeks, and thanks to its AI algorithms, automatically recommend financial products to its stakeholders.

Startups selected for Fast Track Program:

CLOSD: a legal transaction management platform created by former business lawyers. It brings together lawyers and parties in a safe space, facilitates and ensures document exchange, simplifies project organization and management with interactive check lists, automates signings and closures with electronic signatures in a secure interface to authenticate the signatures, and creates archives on transactions once they are closed.

doDOC: a collaborative platform to plan, edit, review and approve complex professional documents. doDOC creates high value by streamlining document workflow, which enables quicker document preparation, a perfect instant format, and a traceable document life cycle.

Cuatrecasas Acelera website: https://acelera.cuatrecasas.com