IN COLLABORATION WITH TELEFÓNICA
More than ten years of experience in the world of buying and selling local and international items on the Internet, or in other words, marketplace, endorse Ignacio Martínez. Together with his good friend Pablo López, he founded his own company to carry out a joint and personal project. With this motivation, Venped emerged, a startup that connects almost two dozen employees around the world, from Montemayor, a small town in the Cordoba countryside, to Colombia and Australia.
Ignacio Martínez and Pablo López are the protagonists of this Telefónica story that shows the scope of inclusive digitization, emphasizing how technology makes it easier to connect and boost people and companies. Because each one of us has the potential to make society progress and that is only possible when there are opportunities for everyone.
This project uses connectivity to break down the physical barriers that separate us and generate employment. This characteristic feature of Venped allows uniting the best professionals no matter where they are located. In addition, it is also a fundamental quality of the final product that they offer to the market: “Connectivity is very important for us because it makes it possible to have the whole team spread around the world, have a good connection and be able to connect with colleagues who may be in other end of the world. We want to convey the same to those who contract our services, that they can work from anywhere and at any time”, explains Ignacio Martínez.
“We want to transmit to those who contract our services that they can connect with us anywhere and at any time”
Since May 2022, Venped is one of the companies that are part of the Telefónica group’s acceleration program. In this way, the Spanish company innovates, undertakes and supports technological projects that are emerging.
Connectivity as a fundamental axis
Thanks to digital connectivity, Venped has been able to provide all the facilities to its employees and great milestones have been achieved in a short space of time: “It is a young team and all we have achieved is a joint effort. Everyone has done their best to be able to link up with other companies and make all these connections”, adds Ignacio. This startup has workers in places like Montemayor (Córdoba), Toledo, Vigo, Zaragoza, Madrid, Valladolid and in other parts of the world, such as Portugal, Colombia and Australia.
“Connectivity plays a total role. We need to be constantly informed and for this we use various tools. That union that allows us connectivity promotes a close human treatment. Our team is quite good, we are delighted with what we have and that is thanks to the connectivity, otherwise everything would be much more difficult”, explains Pablo.
“Connectivity promotes a close human treatment that, without it, would be much more difficult”
However, he believes that we must know how to “measure well” the use we make of connectivity on a day-to-day basis for group management. To stay connected and promote a good atmosphere, Ignacio indicates that every other Friday they play board games online: “One person chooses a game and it becomes a couple of hours in which the whole team is talking in a relaxed way and getting to know each other major”.
professional and human improvement
The beginnings were hard. It is not easy to break with job stability to start your own personal project. For this, experience alone is not enough, passion and absolute faith in what you are creating is necessary. “I had been in charge of the operational part of sales in other companies in which I had been. I made a product similar to Venped’s, but I wanted to make it for myself. I proposed it to a series of investors, I spoke with Pablo to be my CEO and we got down to work”, says Ignacio.
Creating a project from scratch is not easy. There were obstacles in the search for financing and in the development of the product, but with effort, tenacity and perseverance they have managed to make Vented a reliable company with recognized partners in the market such as El Corte Inglés, MediaMarkt or AliExpress. Although both founders agree that the weight of responsibility is felt to a greater extent in the management of the group and in the decisions that concern the personal life of the team and themselves.
“Not a teacher and not a career can match what he learned. He has been a roller coaster of emotions. And he still is. Obviously, he worked more than ever, in the end you turn to what you feel is yours, you have to move forward and overcome many situations of all kinds, ”says Pablo.
“In the end you turn to what you feel is yours and overcome situations of all kinds”
Thanks to the conviction and ambition of this tandem, Venped has moved forward and envisions a promising future: “I believe that it will be a relevant company within the world of the market. Our philosophy is healthy, we seek to make things easier for those who are producing, for those who are discovering that the economy works and for those who want to scale up their business, and I believe that in the end this is rewarded”, concludes Ignacio.
How Venped works
Venped unifies and automates sales through the marketplace for the online channels of large multinationals. With a still short history, they simplify all sales management to save money, gain time, increase sales volume and better position their partners’ products: “We work together with companies that have handled multiple channels and thousands of products. Our mission is to simplify and automate a large number of tasks such as orders, returns, incidents, promotions and campaigns, among others”, says Pablo.
