Renfe hosts seven start-ups and investors on a Madrid–Seville AVE train

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On 21 September 2026 Renfe turned an AVE carriage between Madrid and Seville into a meeting room. Through its open innovation programme TrenLab, and together with the organisers of Al Andalus Innovation Venture, it ran the fourth Pitch Train. Each founder gets three minutes to pitch, a whistle blows, and they move on to the next person, with five minutes per meeting. A train journey of a little over two hours, it turns out, is enough for about ten meetings with people who might otherwise take weeks to reply to an email. Seven start-ups took part. Across the aisle were Wayra, Bewater Funds and Faraday Venture Partners, corporates including Iberdrola, Naturgy, Acciona, Mapfre and Enagás, and public bodies ENISA and ICEX.

Parkiduo, founded in Elche by Laura Sempere, rents out shared garage spaces by day and night shifts. It has 3,800 registered users, raised a €45,000 first round from BANC and Technetium, and is now looking for around €100,000 in investment and debt. SkyPro 360, from Andalusia, cleans building façades with drones and wants investors and corporate partners to help it reach Madrid and Catalonia. Flowy, a 10-person Italian company, does away with paper tickets by using station sensors and an app to log when passengers get on and off. It already works with 15 Italian rail firms and 5 bus firms. The other four start-ups were Teco Mobility, Torch Smart Urban Solutions, IT Digittal and WhiteBox.

Flowy won the Pitch Train award. Two days later it also took the mobility prize at Al Andalus Innovation Venture, held in Seville on 22 and 23 September with more than 3,000 attendees.