A fair, turned around
In most innovation contests, startups arrive with their own idea and look for someone to buy it. InnoMatch 2026 works the other way around: companies bring a concrete problem from their own operation, and startups compete to solve it. That is why it is called a reverse fair.
It is driven by the German Chamber of Commerce (DHK) and the DINAMICA II Initiative, with the support of the European Union, German Cooperation and KfW, and of BCIE, which hosted the awards. The Green and Digital Innovation Fair brought together about 80 participants: companies with digital and sustainability challenges, startups, institutions and partners.
The format has an advantage few contests have: every proposal is measured against a real problem, with its data, its hours and its people. The flashiest idea does not win. The one that solves best does.
The challenges
The companies brought problems from their day to day, in sectors like energy, retail, logistics and technology: assessing customers better, unifying systems that do not talk to each other, restocking on time, putting AI to work on their own data, and running the operation without losing anything critical.
At CIRO we sent proposals for five challenges. One of them won: the challenge of a company whose whole operation lives in email.
One inbox for everything
Picture an operation that runs 24 hours a day. Customs, transport, suppliers, lodging, catering and shipment tracking all write to the same inbox. Emails are handled in order of arrival, and the critical one is only discovered when someone opens it.
One email in four arrives outside office hours. A missing document can go unnoticed, a late answer can stop the operation, and the team reads everything by hand, day and night. Nobody knows for sure what was left unattended.
The challenge was clear: make sure the critical always arrives on time, without asking people to read more.
Why it matters beyond one company
People already use AI: according to Microsoft’s AI Diffusion report, one in five people aged 15 to 64 in the country uses generative AI, above the world average. Companies are another story. According to CEPAL, only 5.9% of the country’s firms have adopted AI, against 20% in the European Union and 26% in Germany.
Latin America receives 1.12% of the world’s investment in AI while it produces 6.6% of the world’s GDP. Spaces like InnoMatch close that gap from the most practical side: they put companies and the people who build technology to work on the same problem.
People who use generative AIages 15 to 64, June 2026
Companies that use AIshare of firms, 2025
Sources: Microsoft AI Economy Institute, Global AI Diffusion Q2 2026 (people); CEPAL 2026, data for 2025 (companies in El Salvador); Eurostat 2025, firms with 10 or more employees (Germany and the EU).
The solution: AI with human judgment
Our proposal joins two forces. AI reads everything, at any hour. People bring the judgment and make the decisions. It works in four steps.
The team teaches. In a criteria workshop, the company defines in its own words what is critical, what is important and what can wait. CIRO reads and sorts every email, in seconds, into four levels: critical, important, informative or junk. CIRO alerts the critical. The alert reaches Microsoft Teams, to the person on duty, day or night. The person decides. They resolve the case, and every correction sharpens CIRO’s criteria.
AI reads every email. People decide what matters.
From the workshop to the live operation
The pilot moves in three stages, so trust is earned with data: first the criteria workshop; then a blind test with more than 200 real emails, where we compare CIRO’s labels with the team’s; and finally the live operation, with measured goals.
Instead of reading everything, the team moves on to deciding what matters.
- 1Criteria workshopThe team defines the criteria in its own words.
- 2Blind test200+ real emails: CIRO’s labels against the team’s.
- 3LiveWith goals measured by area and person.
Proposed pilot goals. Workdays: CIRO estimate based on the Work Trend Index 2025.
Award night
On October 21, at BCIE’s offices, we received the recognition as the winning solution, in front of representatives of the German Embassy, the European Union, BCIE and the German Chamber.
We are a Salvadoran startup building AI for Latin America, and this recognition pushes us forward. Thank you to BCIE, the German Chamber, the German Embassy, the European Union, German Cooperation, KfW and the DINAMICA II Initiative for creating spaces where innovation starts from a real problem. And thank you to the company that trusted us with its challenge.
This is only the beginning. CIRO launches on November 4.
Key takeaways
- In a reverse fair, companies bring the problem and startups compete to solve it.
- We won with a real challenge: making the critical in a shared inbox arrive on time.
- AI reads every email; people set the criteria and decide.
- The pilot earns trust with data: workshop, blind test, live operation.