The Associació de Joves Empresaris de Catalunya (AIJEC) has designated Enric Asunción, co-founder of Wallbox, as Young Entrepreneur of the year in the 28th edition of the awards granted by the entity. The jury of the call has recognized Enric Asunción's entrepreneurial capacity and professional work at the helm of Wallbox, a Barcelona-based provider of electric vehicle charging solutions and energy management that is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, for its revolution in the field of electric mobility. Enric Asunción's candidacy prevailed over two other finalists: Josep Fajula, from OCA Global, and Pau Sarsanedas, from GPAInnova.
In this year's edition, the firm The Blue Box was also awarded as Best Business Initiative and the businessman Joan Font, president of the Bon Preu group, for his professional career. The Blue Box has developed a biomedical device inspired by the olfactory system and the olfactory neurons of a dog that, thanks to artificial intelligence, allows detecting breast cancer at home, non-invasively and only from a urine sample.
For his part, Joan Font is the founder of the Bon Preu group, a food distribution chain that opened its first store in 1974 in Manlleu and now has a presence throughout Catalonia with a network of Bonpreu supermarkets and Esclat hypermarkets, in addition to owning gas stations and an electricity trading company.
The awards ceremony took place this Thursday at the Convention Center of the IMO, the Institute of Ocular Microsurgery of Barcelona. During the celebration, the president of AIJEC Joves Empresaris, Ruben Sans, highlighted the lack of recognition for the figure of the entrepreneur, but stressed that this "does not alter either the vocation or the desire to undertake" of young entrepreneurs. Likewise, he called on administrations to apply clear policies of support for entrepreneurs, legal certainty, help to give visibility to companies and for European funds to reach the entire Catalan business fabric, regardless of the size of the companies.
For the president of AIJEC, the coronavirus crisis has positioned young entrepreneurs as "experts in turning setbacks into allies" and he believes it has been shown that entrepreneurs have long championed "the creation of valuable employment, which incorporates concepts such as equality policies, sustainable development goals, and awareness of how our footprint will affect the future of coming generations". This is, according to Sans, the DNA of young entrepreneurs.
The president of AIJEC, Ruben Sans, laments the lack of recognition for the figure of the entrepreneurThis year's Young Entrepreneur awards have also granted the recognition for Business Linguistic Quality to PocketPiano, the first pocket piano that allows playing music anywhere; while the awardto the Social Entrepreneur has fallen on Nixi for Children, a startup that applies virtual reality to improve the relationship between children and the hospital environment, reduce the anxiety of sick children and thus improve their emotional well-being and also their health.
This year, the recognition for Future Entrepreneur, an award that recognizes the best entrepreneurial project developed by children under 18 from the Escola Emprenedors Foundation, has gone to the CTRL Audiovisual Project by third-year ESO students from IES Salas y Xandri in Sant Quirze del Vallès. This is an academic project that has developed an online company for training courses in video and video game creation.
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