ESADE Alumni and Banc Sabadell name Red Points 'Start-up of the Year'

ESADE Alumni and BStartup, Banc Sabadell’s programme to support entrepreneurs, have selected Red Points, a tech company specialised in protecting digital assets and brands sold online, as the ESADE Alumni & Banc Sabadell Start-up of the Year, in recognition of its trajectory and high growth in a short period of time.

The award will be presented to the company’s founder and president, Josep Coll, CEO, Laura Urquizu, and head of business development, David Casellas, by Xavier Sanchez, director of ESADE Alumni, and Carlos Ventura, managing director of Banc Sabadell, on Wednesday, 15 June, within the context of Alumni Entrepreneurship Day, an event featuring talks, debates and panel discussions in which entrepreneurs and new business opportunities take centre stage.

According to the Red Points CEO, ‘We view this award as recognition of the value Red Points adds to companies by offering an innovative solution in a market in which the impact of piracy and counterfeits entails annual losses of $1.7 billion and absolutely affects all industries.’

Mr Coll, the Red Points founder, added, ‘We are thrilled to receive this award. It is a wonderful time for Red Points, as we are now in the process of expanding following our rapid growth in Europe.’

Expansion of Red Points

With operations in Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and Mexico, in 2015, Red Point was selected for Banc Sabadell’s BStartup10 investment programme and won the 21st Entrepreneur Award, co-sponsored by La Caixa and the Spanish Ministry of Industry, for the ICT industry in the Growth category. It has signed major partnership agreements with companies such as Deloitte and organisations such as AIE Sociedad de Artistas, the Spanish association of artists and performers, with whom it has joined forces in the fight against the illegal distribution of digital content. The key to its success lies in its proprietary MAGDA technology, which, with a success rate of up to 98%, removes more than 40,000 items of illegal content each month. 

Its clients include some of the main Spanish and international publishing and audiovisual groups, renowned sporting bodies and world-class athletes, and leading brands with global operations.

Red Points had previously presented to ESADE BAN, at an investment forum held in October 2014, closing a round of funding totalling €300,000 later that month with investors from ESADE. Eight business angels from the network co-invested in the operation, including a lead investor.

ESADE Alumni and entrepreneurship

The Start-up of the Year award is given within the context of ESADE Alumni Entrepreneurship Day, an event aimed at entrepreneurs, investors, students and the entrepreneurial ecosystem at large. The event is one of many ESADE Alumni initiatives related to entrepreneurs and start-ups, such as the aforementioned ESADE BAN, ESADE Alumni’s business angel network, recently named the best private business angel network in Europe by the European Business Angels Network (EBAN).  

ESADE BAN acts as a meeting point for investors seeking investment opportunities and entrepreneurs with innovative projects in need of early-stage funding. It is currently made up of more than 200 private investors and analyses more than 600 projects a year. In the last four years, the network has invested more than €15 million in 94 companies.