Caixabank’s DayOne: entrepreneurship in the finance sector
The Leaders visited the Barcelona offices of one of the leading Spanish banks.
The last day of the Indian Leaders 2019 programme started with a visit to Caixabank’s headquarters, where they learned about DayOne, the bank’s division specialising in tech innovation companies and investors.
Joan Rosas, Head of International Relations and Patron of Honour at SICF, welcomed the participants and expressed his willingness to create new collaborative links with Indian companies and institutions. Caixabank, he emphasised, “works with all Indian banks: we have an outstanding relationship with them and an office in the country. We will be glad to collaborate.”
Víctor Cardoner and Ayshah But, Product Manager and Business Developer of DayOne, respectively, also attended the meeting and explained the company’s structure and strengths.
DayOne is the division of La Caixa in charge of the startup and investor community. As Víctor Cardoner told the Leaders, “during this visit to Spain you have seen that the ecosystem is growing in Spain and more specifically in Barcelona, and that there are many stakeholders involved, with startups at the centre and investors around them.”
DayOne’s mission in this ecosystem is to “help startups become consolidated companies,” and they achieve this by helping to boost the ecosystem through specialised banking services and corporate venturing.
There are many benefits to collaboration between financial institutions and startups. Firstly, “banks innovate more efficiently, they enter new market segments and are perceived to be more innovative.” Emerging companies, in turn, “have access to a large client base, benefit from the bank’s trust and reputation, and gain stability and a constant business flow.”
DayOne has centres in Barcelona, Madrid, Valencia, Bilbao and Málaga in which talent and capital come together. Moreover, it provides financial consulting services, tailored financial products and services, and a global network of relations with the main players and stakeholders at different innovation hubs around the world.
Of all the activities carried out by DayOne, Aysha But highlighted the Emprendedor XXI awards, which select companies that have been operating for less than three years in different sectors and, on top of awarding them cash prizes, provide them with training programmes at prestigious centres in Cambridge and Silicon Valley. Since it was created in 2007, Emprendedor XXI has invested over 4.5 million in awards and supported more than 300 companies.
Many of those companies, said Joan Rosas, “were not created by Spaniards but by foreign nationals. We would love to have a company created by one of the Indian Leaders; we would be delighted to welcome them.”
