The three winners are Growappy, Equivalence and Usawa Care, each works in different fields, and all three presented “solutions with social impact” that “will be implemented in the city”, as well as they will receive €120.000 in funding.

The winning projects

Growappy works in the Quality Education field and wants “to reduce the bureaucratic burden on education professionals and facilitate communication between schools and families”. Currently, it has partnerships “with 23 institutions, totalling more than 6.500 users”. The Growappy, “during the pilot phase,” helped education professionals to save “more than 100 minutes per day in administrative tasks”, with families interacting with the platform “more than 40 times per week”.

Equivalence works on the Migrant Integration category and “offers a solution that matches migrants’ past experience”, in various fields like education, employment and volunteering, “with equivalent experiences in the country to which the user has migrated”. According to the press release sent to The Portugal News, Equivalence “has more than 170 subscribers and 12 strategic partners”.

The third winner, Usawa Care, received its distinction “in the Access to Healthcare category”, after creating an “innovative model using AI that allows a single paediatrician to safely monitor a larger number of children”. The platform allows to have “unlimited access to a paediatrician with a response time of less than 15 minutes”. The start-up, during the concept phase, has collaborated with more than 40 institutions and currently has more than 600 users. There are being registered, on average, 10 consultations per week.

Changing the city for best

The winners’ announcement was done during the Unicorn Week, that happened from 2 to 6 June, when Carlos Moedas, Lisbon’s mayor, complimented the Unicorn Factory work, highlighting its social importance, underlining that “in Lisbon, innovation reaches everyone and is at the service of the people”, not only through employment, but also by “mobilising the creativity of technology companies to bring new ideas and help solve social challenges.”

The executive director of Unicorn Factory, also quoted in the press release, Gil Azevedo, says that the “award is a significant milestone for Lisbon, translating into a tangible impact on the city's daily life in critical areas such as health, education and immigration.” According to him, there were received “more than 300 applications were received from 40 countries”, showing that Lisbon is “attracting international talent and transforming innovation into real impact”.

Each start-up will receive €120.000 and see their projects being implemented in Lisbon, to test the solutions “in a real-world context, in collaboration with various institutions”, trying to expand their impact. There will be held regular meetings to “present progress reports on the work carried out, with continuous monitoring and specialised mentoring.”