Startup Spotlight #16: Babele

August 23, 2019

Hackquarters is defined as a startup accelerator and a corporate innovation partner. As we are working on a niche subject, there are not many startups that target our own target.

Babele, on the other hand, is a startup that may help not only accelerators like Hackquarters, but also makes life easier for startups.

Babele is a virtual accelerator dedicated to startup incubators and intrapreneurship programs. It provides a collaborative environment for business modeling, online mentoring and peer-learning, and enables administrators to engage all stakeholders effectively.

You can always apply for Startup Spotlight from this link. We will also include you into our network and you will be notified about our upcoming events, calls for programs and get exclusive invites.

What is the name of your startup?

Babele

What is the website address of Babele?

https://www.babele.co

Where is your startup based?

Romania

What are your targeted verticals for your startup?

Enterprise SaaS, Incubator, Accelerator

Tell us what your startup does.

It is a virtual accelerator dedicated to startup incubators and intrapreneurship programs. It provides a collaborative environment for business modeling, online mentoring and peer-learning, and enables administrators to engage all stakeholders effectively.

Tell us about your team.

3 international cofounders. Emanuele, Italian, ex innovation manager for P&G, an expert in business modeling, collective intelligence and social innovation. Ruxandra, Romanian, ex Sustainability consultant at Deloitte, an expert in finance, business management, and social impact assessment. Diego, Spanish, senior IT Developer, co-founder of a large IT development company in Spain, CTO of Babele. Our other awesome team members are Arnaud and Eliza, respectively from France and Romania, who work on business development. Then Raul and Olena, from Spain and Ukraine, who work on back and front end development.

When and why did you found your startup?

The concept of Babele was the subject of Emanuele’s master thesis written in Brazil in 2009, where he was mentored by Roberto Guimaraes, Former Chair of the Scientific Committee of the IHDP (UNESCO). The research paper aimed to draw a roadmap on how to harness collective brainpower to innovate in the area of sustainability.

The startup was then founded in 2013, with the aim to enable social entrepreneurs to share and validate their strategy by crowd-sourcing ideas and feedback from a wide spectrum of international stakeholders and peer-entrepreneurs. After 2 years of activities, we started to grow a dynamic community of social innovation support programs (universities, incubators, corporations), creating interconnected clusters of social businesses and experts that can leverage the collective wisdom and resources of all the network.

What are your key and unique features?

The tool enables the guided co-creation of sustainable strategies and business models. It allows to engage key stakeholders in the innovation process: leveraging their collective knowledge to bootstrap innovative ideas and co-develop them into complex strategic plans.

What is your growth like?

Babele is generating revenues with recurring customers spread across 4 continents. We work with organizations such as the United Nations, EY in London, CDC bank in Paris, Chicco in Italy, Berkeley University, the British Council, etc. The team has been growing over the past year, going from 3 to 7 people.

Tell us about the numbers that matter to you.

Over 1000 business model of social enterprise from 106 countries. Over 40 Social innovation programs that have used our platform. Over 500 startups trained through workshops and boot camps. Over 1000 participants took part in our events.

What are your plans for next year and the next 5 years?

For the next year: we ait to become the reference platform for business incubation and acceleration. For the next 5 years, we aim to become the reference tool for social intrapreneurship programs at a European Level.