As students of the Industrial Design Engineering degree at Elisava, Marcel Rovira and Anna Martín believe that it is “a shame that many faculty projects end up sitting in a drawer,” in Rovira’s words. Determined not to let it happen to them, this pair of students began a series of weekly meetings to come up with a good business idea that would not end up in a drawer.
The idea arose after a conversation about renewable energies with Rovira’s father, a physicist who told them about hydrogen. Then the friends contacted Lucas Vicén, a friend of Rovira who is studying Chemical Engineering at the Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS). Vicén joined the weekly meetings and as a result of these the idea arose of creating a generator so that any person or company with surplus energy of renewable origin can store this surplus in the form of hydrogen and then recover this energy and use it as fuel.
With this idea under their belt, the three young people won the ImaginPlanet Challenge, a competition that as a prize led them to carry out an incubation program in Silicon Valley. Once the idea was validated and after a pre-seed investment of 50,000 euros, the entrepreneurs formed the startup Atom H2 Energy Tech in September 2023. Mariona Figueras, a friend and university classmate of Rovira and Martín, also joined the team.
These entrepreneurs, who are between 21 and 22 years old, combine their studies with the company, which is currently being incubated by Ship2B and has the help of Elisava and the IQS. They have also won 25,000 euros from an EduCaixa program. Their main challenge right now is to be able to create a generator on a commercial scale.
“We have a functional laboratory-scale prototype and now we have presented our first minimum viable product at 4YFN,” explains Figueras. The next phase is to carry out a pilot project and for this they are closing an agreement with a brewing company. For the pilot, entrepreneurs will set out in search of more investment. At the same time, Rovira and Martín have obtained a scholarship to pursue a master’s degree in Business Administration and Management at the Esade business school.
The young entrepreneurs are aware that Atom H2 Energy Tech has “a lot of national and international competition,” but “everything has yet to be proven!” says Rovira confidently. The co-founder adds that “to compensate for our youth and inexperience, we have sought the best partners in each field.”