The 3rd Coria Business Market took place in the county Marismas del Guadalquivir in the metropolitan area of Seville. The main target of this event was informing business owners and entrepreneurs about the funding available in the European Union through venture capital investment models. In addition, getting to know how to get useful information for strategy in the frame of entrepreneurship and commercial networking.

Juanma Revuelta, CEO of Finnova Foundation, participated during the conference: “Opportunities in Europe for the development of territories and entrepreneurial drive”. He explained the projects in which the foundation participates, such as the Firefighting Open Innovation Lab in the field of forest fires and forest management, where they support entrepreneurial initiatives. Another one is the “Centro Ibérico para la Investigación y Lucha contra Incendios Forestales” (Iberian Centre for investigation and fight against forest fires), CILIFO for short, has a 24,6-million-euro total budget. 75% from this budget is financed by a cooperation program between Spain and Portugal called NAPOCTEP (Programa de Cooperación Transfronteriza Interreg VA España-Portugal – Interreg POCTEP (2014-2020). It is a transboundary project that aims to transform the Napoleonic heritage in a touristic quality product, that is also sustainable and that can create wealth and jobs in regions like Castilla y León in Spain and others in Portugal, that is under the threat of losing population and aging. Another project is the Startup Europe Awards, an opened innovative instrument that enables enterprises to identify talent start-ups that can tackle current challenges in different fields. It is also an instrument of social awareness through Media Startup Alliance, which also counts with European media participation.

Finally, Juan Manuel Revuelta clarified how does Finnova work and the projects in which he collaborates, as well as the ones he has developed. During the forum, he also described: “what we do in Finnova Foundation is try to ease and extract access to European funds for the development of territories. This is how we help startups develop together with local governments.” He also highlighted that currently “there are 15 million euros of European funding that has not been spent”, but administrations, provincial councils and mayors of Spain still have time to reschedule these funds and use them before 2023.