Telefónica Public Policy & Telefónica España Regulatory teams
The European Commission’s Vicepresident and European Commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, visited last week the facilities of the Wayra Academy in Madrid, accompanied by César Alierta, Chairman of Telefónica.
As you already know, Wayra is an initiative boosted by Telefónica Digital whose main objective is to identify talents in Europe and Latin America in the field of ICTs and provide them support to make their business models a reality. This initiative has no precedents within the Telefónica Group and aims to give an opportunity to talents in order to retain their creativity and innovation in their countries of origin.
The European Commissioner showed interest at each of the 10 awarded projects by this initiative of the Telefónica Group in Spain. These projects were chosen among a total of 581 submissions from all the Autonomous Communities of Spain.
The 10 projects will be now speeded up in the Wayra Academy of Madrid – a 1,100m2 surface located at the 8th floor of the Telefónica building in Gran Vía, 28.
In the Academy, which opened in November 2011, entrepreneurs can enjoy a creative and stimulating atmosphere, benefiting from material resources, advice and an extensive network of mentors to develop their projects.
Gonzalo Martín-Villa, Global Head of Wayra, explained to the Commissioner how Wayra has become to date into the greatest platform for innovative projects in Latin America – in less than a year, Wayra has received almost 6,000 innovative proposals in two continents. The platform aims to become an accelerator for the development of future ecosystems of technological projects known as “Sillicon Valleys” and achieve an outstanding impact in the economies of the Latin American and European countries where Telefónica operates.
After having visited the MWC 2012 in Barcelona, Commissioner Kroes honoured us with her presence at the Wayra Academy in Madrid. This is the second time Ms. Kroes visits a Wayra Academy and we thank her for taking the time to visit us again.
If you would like to know more about Wayra, please click here. You may also follow Wayra on Twitter via #Wayra or on Facebook or even via our YouTube channel.
To watch the video of the visit, click below:
