Three promising Irish SMEs have been selected for funding under the latest round of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator announced today. They are:
- Capri Medical Ltd (Galway) for a new project to treat patients with chronic post operative pain. The Capri Stim implant will allow patients to be discharged from the healthcare system earlier. The project was developed in NUI Galway.
- Vivasure Medical Ltd (Galway) for a new project to develop the world’s first absorbable percutaneous closure device for large venotomies. Venotomies are holes made in veins to provide access for surgical procedures.
- Geowox Ltd (Dublin) for a new platform supercharging residential property valuations. The platform will provide data-driven residential property valuations in real-time for mortgage providers and mortgage investors.
05/12/2019
Two of the Irish SMEs are set to receive both a grant (of up to €2.5 million) and a direct equity investment (blended finance). This is the first time that this “blended finance” has been offered, and allows a much higher level of funding (up to €17.5 million per company) to accelerate the growth of European companies with ground-breaking innovations. The Commission has also signed an agreement with the European Investment Bank Group to set up a dedicated EIC Fund to manage the equity investment.
In total 75, promising start-ups and SMEs around Europe were selected in this funding round, the largest one so far under the pilot phase of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Accelerator for a total funding of over €278 million.
Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Innovation, Research, Culture, Education and Youth, said: “The future European Innovation Council will turn far more of Europe’s world class science and start-ups to global technology leaders. I am glad that this first offer of combined grant and equity financing saw such a high demand from Europe’s start-ups and SMEs. This confirms that the European Innovation Council is filling a gap in funding, and that it is right to set it up as a fully-fledged initiative under the next EU budget”.
As well as the financial support, the start-ups and SMEs will have access to coaching, networking and business acceleration services to help them build their businesses. The new EIC Fund will conduct the necessary due diligence in order to make the equity investments in early 2020. The EIC Fund will bring in co-investments and follow up investments by private investors and others.
