DigiFed’s first open call results announced: 14 projects and 22 European companies receive a total of over 1.1 million euros for their digital innovation ambitions

In a first effort to engage European SMEs and midcaps in its innovation programme, DigiFed is pleased to announce the results of the project’s 1^st Open Call launched on the 17^th of March 2020.

Out of approximately 72 eligible proposals which involved 94 European companies including start-ups, SMEs and mid-caps (see Figure 1) from across Europe (see Figure 2), 22 European companies have been selected to receive financial, technical and innovation management support for the creation of smart applications to help digitise European Industries.

The distribution percentage of funding per company size can be seen in Figure 3.

The first call was specifically aimed towards “Application Experiments,” meaning that the  applicants provide an innovative produce or service, with a clear market vision, but need technical and/or business innovation expertise in order to validate their concept.

48 companies applied for “single application experiments,” meaning that a single applicant company will receive, along with cascade funding of up to 55k€, technical and business expertise from DigiFed to support their project.

46 companies applied for “Twin application experiments,” which is when two partner companies from two different countries apply together; these applications will each receive up to 55 k€ in cascade funding for supporting their project, while DigiFed will provide support through business innovation expertise.

All proposals were evaluated in a first phase by the independent experts and in a second phase by DigiFed’s team. The 14 winning projects will be carried out by the 22 selected companies and are scheduled to start in October 2020.

So far, the overall budget distributed for the first DigiFed open call is 1 150 224,79 € out of a total available budget of 3,5M€ cascade funding across 3 open calls. In the first call the largest share went to companies based in France, followed by Belgium, Italy and Spain (see Figure 4)

DigiFed is dedicated to supporting EU industries in the digitalisation of their products and services and assists in reaching new markets enabled by Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Embedded Systems. It aims to promote a total of 40 projects, fostering alliances between SMEs to demonstrate the potential of CPS digital technologies. DigiFed incentivises cooperation among hubs across Europe to make those technologies and know-how available to all European SMEs. ZABALA’s role in the project is to launch and manage open calls and management support.

If you are a start-up, SME or Midcap with an interest in developing smart applications, do not miss the 2^nd Open Call which will be launched on the 22^nd of September 2020.

Keep an eye out for more information on the DigiFed website and by following DigiFed on Twitter and Linkedin.