Announcing the Finalist Youth Entrepreneurs of InnovAction 2.0

We were thrilled to see the incredible response to our InnovAction 2.0 Challengein partnership with the Young Americas Business Trust (YABT) to stimulate youth-led innovation to reduce waste, promote sustainability, and protect and manage natural resources.

Nearly 1,700 young people from 31 countries registered for the competition. Each of these young people, regardless of how far they got in the competition, took the first steps towards being part of positive change for their communities by developing a team and a business plan. Of their proposals, YABT's team of judges has selected 20 finalist teams.

The 20 finalists will fine tune their proposals and present them to a panel of judges for evaluation. The nine winning teams will receive a combination of seed capital, technical and mentoring support, and international visibility to launch their solutions. The virtual award ceremony will be held on August 12 and 13. To learn how to join these live events and read more about the InnovAction 2.0 Challenge and our partner organization, YABT, visit their website.

InnovAction 2.0 Finalists

Eight of the finalists are at the stage of prototyping their concepts:

• Forest Fires Detection System, Bolivia. This business' goal is to speed up response times to forest fires by developing an Artificial Intelligence-driven gas sensor. This innovative technology will allow clients to effectively monitor and protect natural areas and biodiversity.
• Uru Uru Team, Bolivia. This business' project addresses pollution in the Uru Uru Lake Ramsar wetland area that threatens local biodiversity and disrupts Indigenous livelihoods. Combining innovative practices and Indigenous knowledge, this team aims to reduce pollution and foster community development through ecotourism opportunities.
• Iwa ingenieria y educación, Colombia. This business teaches sustainable engineering and digital skills to students. Teaching topics such as agricultural engineering, the application of electronics for sustainability, and the use of smart homes, simultaneously promotes students' digital literacy and teaches them about the importance of using technology responsibly.
• ECOTRANSFORMADORA DE URABÁ (eturabá+), Colombia. This business focuses on producing biofertilizer and biogas that will be marketed to agricultural producers, using post-consumer waste from households and post-harvest waste from banana farms in the town of Uveros in the municipality of San Juan de Urabá in the Department of Antioquia.
• POOL - Comunidad Universitaria, Ecuador. This business seeks to solve the daily problems of university students by providing a rideshare service among university students, a secure community marketplace, peer tutoring among students, and a communication channel between universities and students.
• Finca Regenerativa Comizahual, El Salvador. This farm business is using rain and street gutter water to reforest a degraded area with pine, mango, and avocado trees, and native edible plants including izotes and yucca. The goal is to create an oasis of biodiversity that can serve as a model in the region, living in balance with Indigenous ancestral practices.
• Campis, Peru. This business is a mobile application that uses Artificial Intelligence and signal processing to predict or detect diseases and pests in potato crops.
• Oruvital, Uruguay. This business is developing the world's first grape pomace jam, an upcycled and functional food with multiple potential benefits for the environment and human health. Grape pomace is waste produced by the wine industry, consisting mainly of the skin or peel, residual pulp, seeds, and stems.

Eight of the finalist teams are at the stage of developing a minimum viable product:

• ketran - Agrobot, Chile. This business is creating a robot with the ability to plant and care for more than 30 types of vegetable species. Ketran will enable farmers to rotate crops for organic production, monitor the growth of weeds, and diagnose pests, diseases, or soil nutrients.
• Terraweb, Colombia. This business focuses on developing green web solutions with a focus on environmental sustainability and energy efficiency. It minimizes websites' digital carbon footprint by optimizing the code and backend, allowing efficient management of server resources.
• BioFun, Costa Rica. This scientist-led biotechnology business addresses the problems caused by bioactive contaminants, such as pharmaceuticals, entering the water and negatively affecting aquatic life while raising antibiotic resistance and threatening public health. Its first device, BioCap450, harnesses the power of fungi to degrade contaminating compounds in water.
• Saneamiento Bio Circular por Evapotranspiración, Ecuador. This business aims to reuse tires and debris to create systems to treat wastewater at low cost, reducing its environmental impact and enabling the water to be used to fertilize soil for agricultural production.
• Tareyas Agrotech, El Salvador. This business is an innovative digital platform that revolutionizes the supply chain of agricultural ingredients in the restaurant industry. It directly connects local producers with restaurants, guaranteeing fresh, high-quality products at fair prices, promoting sustainability and efficiency in the supply chain.
• Defossilize-30 Advanced Biofuel, Jamaica. The business is developing a more sustainable biofuel called De30 and a clean energy framework to help refiners decarbonize their operations.
• PolyOil, Mexico. The business repurposes used cooking oil from restaurants and cafeterias to produce a renewable, biologically based polyol used to help produce biopolyurethane thermal insulating foams that work better than existing insulations and can be biodegradable when no longer needed.
• Ruruka, Paraguay. This business seeks to give a second life to the waste sludge generated by various industries, making sustainable bricks with a percentage of waste sludge using local labor.

Finally, four finalists are in the startup phase:

• TREEECO, Argentina. This business converts urban and rural compostable waste into organic fertilizer.
• Colcagro, Colombia. This agri-tech startup's digital platform is enabling producers to optimize their production and marketing, accessing wider markets and managing their resources efficiently and sustainably.
• Gama Construction, Mexico. This business makes prefabricated panels made from recycled industrial waste, minimizing construction waste and making sustainable housing more affordable.
• Bliss Circular Economy, Panama. This business makes a feed supplement for farm animals composed of organic residues and meat waste, bones, or shrimp shells.