Centrica invests in EchoCare to develop a non-wearable elderly emergency response system

Written By Ana Martinez

The Client

Centrica is a British multinational energy and services company. Its principal activity is the supply of electricity and gas to consumers in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The Objective

Centrica is interested in collaborating with the startup community to drive innovation. Therefore, they launched “The Active Ageing Challenge” to identify startups developing technologies to help meet the needs of an aging society.

The Solution

Leveraging our expertise, our team sourced startups from around the globe solving this challenge, managed the application process, and vetted the 125 startups that applied from 20 different countries. With our guidance, Centrica selected the top 10 most promising startups to pitch to a panel of industry experts for a prize fund of £100,000.

The Outcome

The panel selected three companies:

  • MINUT - developer of a complete home alarm in a single device

  • EchoCare - developer of a non-wearable, self-learning personal emergency response system

  • Pillo Health - an intelligent care assistant for the home

Following the startup challenge, Centrica invested $300K in EchoCare to help develop their emergency response system.

Ana Martinez

Ana has extensive experience in corporate innovation. She has helped over 25 Global 1000 corporations from a wide range of industries develop new business strategies using the latest technologies in the market and has also led 70+ partnerships between corporations and startups. Ana has worked with corporate clients such as Nestle, PepsiCo, Volkswagen, Procter & Gamble, JetBlue, Mizuho, BP, Repsol, Nissan, Avis Budget Group, Magna, Renault, Ferguson, Allstate, GrainCorp, Givaudan, BSM, Griffith Foods, AGC, IAG, among others.

As a member of Rabobank’s first Innovation Team, Ana successfully launched Foodbytes, a pitch competition and networking platform that connects the top food and agriculture startups, corporates and investors. With 15 global pitch competitions, 260+ startup pitches and 4700+ attendees, Foodbytes has become the top startup pitch competitions in the food and agriculture industries. She also launched TERRA, a food and agriculture accelerator that brings together the industry’s most disruptive startups and leading corporations to fuel industry innovation and strategic partnerships.

Ana graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a major in Economics. She was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and loves to play golf!

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