In December, the National Bank for Economic and Social Development held the “BNDES Day”, an event that celebrated the bank’s 70th anniversary. Among other attractions, the BNDES showed how it opened the doors to the innovation ecosystem in search of solutions to expand options for granting credit to micro and small entrepreneurs. Grupo Sai do Papel – renowned player of Innovation and Investments in startups in Brazil, in partnership with the BNDES’ Open Innovation Initiative area, held a Hackathon and a Microcredit Challenge, both with excellent results.
Bruno Rodrigues, adviser to the presidency of the BNDES, says:
“The Open Innovation initiative is the materialization of the strategic guideline of the Board of Directors for a more disruptive BNDES. It is the concept of an open innovation laboratory at the Bank that accelerates innovations in strategic themes for the country. It brings together a good listening mechanism to converge on the main challenges, it maps innovative solutions in society and transforms them into pilot projects that can exponentially leverage the impact of the BNDES and its ecosystem. We deliver this concept with the Microcredit Challenge.”
Carlos Junior, CEO of Sai do Papel Innovation and Investments Group, highlighted:
“Hackathons and challenges are a very quick way to innovate in large corporations, either by solving real problems that still don’t have active solutions or because they generate more relevant solutions than the current ones. In less than three months, we obtained 43 proposals for the Microcredit Challenge, of which 36 were validated. Of these, 22% solve all the problems proposed in the challenge and 58% solve 3 or more problems. At the same time, in the second initiative which was a Hackathon, we received 155 subscribers, formed 13 teams with 30 mentors and, in 3 intense and very inspiring days, these young talents, 57% of them between 18 and 34 years old, created surprising solutions. It is worth mentioning that not only the winners, but all other finalists have proposals with the potential to be used by the BNDES and its network.”
Among the winners of the Microcredit Challenge, a new front was opened, with G10 Bank, which brought with the Favelas Easy Loan solution, an area that the bank does not yet operate; a digital microcredit platform that, in partnership with city halls, can provide access to credit for small towns not yet served by Nexoos; and an innovative training platform for training credit agents and entrepreneurs, from Instituto Nordeste Cidadania (INEC). In the case of the Hackathon, the second initiative, the winners were the Microcred Network (1o place – BRL 15,000 prize), Yunus (2o place – BRL 10 thousand) and Comunicred (3o place – BRL 5 thousand). The entire journey was recorded on an exclusive landing page for the BNDES.
According to Alice Lopes, chief of staff of the BNDES presidency, the initiatives bring together two very important concepts in the bank’s strategy, the Open BNDES and multiplatform BNDES. The first refers to the concept of transparency and also openness to innovate and work collaboratively. The second talks about a bank that works together with society to build different solutions, a multidimensional bank that manages to work by bringing people together. “Our challenge did not end here, we want to work with the winners and create better and better solutions. We want to insert open innovation initiatives in other fronts of the bank, we have strategic corporate projects to work with smart cities, with urban mobility, with the Amazon project and with themes such as circular economy and bioeconomy”, says Alice Lopes.
The Sai do Paper Innovation and Investment Group has been making history with the open innovation ecosystem, supporting corporations, startups and investors with innovative solutions. In the corporate environment, it assists in the implementation of innovation initiatives, such as hackathons and challenges. Together with startups, it works with mentoring and acceleration (more than 500 accelerated), investments to generate traction and scale startups. The Group acts in the connection between stakeholders through Innovation Hubs (Energy Hub, Finance Hub, Health Hub and Oito by SdP together with Oi), a community of more than 4,500 startups across the country connected to the main players in the market. He is one of the founders and organizers of Rio Innovation Week, an event that last November brought together 60,000 people from the open innovation ecosystem in Rio de Janeiro.
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