FundingBox at IOTWeek 2019: What you should know about our visit to Aarhus city.
Presenting funding opportunities and strengthening collaboration relations was key during our presence at the 2019 IOTWEEK.
From June 17 to 21, Aarhus was a meeting point not only for tech Vikings but for all the leaders, innovators, researchers and professionals that understand how IoT is challenging the status quo and affecting people’s everyday lives.
Founded during the Viking Age, Aarhus is one of the oldest cities in the North of Europe. The city plays a key role in the development of the region: investments in new knowledge hubs, innovation centres, architecture and new technological solutions require an optimal use from applied IoT solutions. This aims to inspire the whole world and will facilitate the application of new IoT solutions.
To make this happen, several efforts among different actors and initiatives need to be leveraged. That’s what brought our CEO Sanyu Karani and Project Manager Roi Rodríguez to the spot. Besides taking a sneak peek into fresh IOT developments, we can conclude that the event was meaningful in three main points.
FundingBox workshop about funding opportunities.
We are active in a large number of initiatives that provide equity-free funds for startups and SMEs under Horizon 2020, the biggest EU Research and Innovation programme ever with nearly €80 billion of funding available from 2014 to 2020.
These initiatives belong to areas such as robotics, AI, smart logistics, decentralised technologies such as blockchain and digital manufacturing among others. Having the opportunity to present all the related areas to a particular topic, like IoT, in one place and at the same time is efficient to show the scope of our reach in order to accomplish our mission: Funding Growth.
In this sense, our Project Manager Roi Rodríguez led this specific workshop. Besides, we oriented the startups and SMEs we met to the programmes that best suited their interests.
Slots to promote specific initiatives related to IoT
The opportunity to showcase in detail specific equity-free funding programmes is also crucial to respond to the needs of some groups of SMEs and startups. During IoTWEEK 2019 our CEO Sanyu Karani presented both I4MS and Ledger.
For I4MS there was a workshop about the 2019 funding opportunities for the EU manufacturing sector, specifically aimed at SMEs.
So far, I4MS has facilitated the investment of €140 million euros for the digitalisation of the EU manufacturing sector since 2013 with the support of the European Commission. Now in phase 3, I4MS is facilitating €34 million to implement application experiments through the following technologies: 3D Printing and other Additive Manufacturing activities, High-Performance Computing, Robotics, and CPS plus the Internet of things.
There will be 4 open calls launched in the second half of 2019, one for each Innovation Action that I4MS has: MiDIH.eu; L4MS.eu; Cloudifacturing.eu and AMable.eu.
This will be done by providing assistance with information, guidance, success cases and live Q&A to facilitate possible applicants to successfully apply.
Ledger was also presented under the frame of the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative. The session was an overview of the NGI initiative, presenting the research and innovation areas where it will focus in the coming years in order to achieve a more inclusive, human and value-centric internet.
Also, there was a presentation of the upcoming open calls for internet innovators in the areas of ‘privacy enhancing technologies’, ‘search and discovery’ and ‘decentralised data governance’, which also relates to the IoT community. There is where Ledger takes place.
Ledger is an acceleration programme that will invest €5.6 million in projects led by teams of researchers, innovators and software developers willing to build human-centric solutions using decentralised technologies, like blockchain, distributed ledger technology (DLT) and/or peer-to-peer (P2P), where citizens regain control over their data. Teams will receive up to 200,000 euros equity-free funding in order to develop Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
Strengthening Relations
Last but not least, we had the opportunity to meet partners and some of the startups and SMEs that have participated in some of our programs. For instance take a look at the case of Nozomi Networks a startup accelerated by FundingBox, INCENSe and Fiware. Later on, the company raised 318 times the funding it first received 4 years before. Now, Nozomi Networks is a leader in the industrial cybersecurity field.
Collaboration is crucial to achieve our goals and help others achieve theirs. We truly believe this! Let’s connect to collaborate now: Join our community in FundingBox. At FundingBox we are #FundingGrowth in Europe.
