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EIT Digital, the European innovation and education network, has opened applications for this year’s EIT Digital Challenge. EIT Digital is calling on late stage startups and scaleups from across Europe that are developing innovative digital tech solutions to participate. Applications are open until October 8.
The winners will receive a prize package worth €100,000 to help stimulate their growth and internationalisation. The package includes a full year of dedicated support from the EIT Digital Accelerator worth €50,000, and a cash prize of €50,000. The EIT Digital Accelerator provides support to raise funding and reach new customers. Recently, the program was ranked eighth among the Top 20 Active Accelerators in the Global Accelerator Report 2016 by Gust.
“Through our excellent pan-European business and technology ecosystem, and guided by our experience and our proven track record in deal making, we as EIT Digital are in a unique position to drive the international scaling of these deep tech digital ventures,” said Willem Jonker, CEO of EIT Digital.
The EIT Digital Challenge is split into five different categories with events in five cities. In each category, five companies will be chosen to compete in the final event days in November and December:
Digital Cities, November 28, Trento The first event tackles the theme of Digital Cities and how scaleups can improve mobility and safety services in cities, help city governments operate and interact with their residents in an innovative way, and revitalise urban design.
Digital Industry, November 29, Eindhoven This category addresses scaleups that can improve efficiencies in production and retail processes to make better use of resources, manufacturing time, and logistics, with tools and processes such as big data collection and analytics, design, simulation, and customer relationship frameworks.
Digital Wellbeing, November 30, Madrid In Madrid, scaleups are invited to pitch their product or service that relates to improving the quality of health and fitness tracking through new technologies, namely in prevention and early detection through hardware like sensors and wearables with smart software for meaningful analytics.
Digital Finance, December 4, Budapest Fintech is a major game changer for financial institutions and consumers alike. Technologies like blockchain, machine learning, and AI all promise to upend the financial sector. At this event, EIT Digital is looking for innovations that will make finance more transparent, decentralised, and reliable for the customer.
Digital Infrastructure, December 11, Berlin In this category, the EIT Digital Challenge is searching for core enabling products and services to accelerate digital transformation, including network management tools, IoT applications, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, as well as solutions for privacy, cyber security and digital ID management.
Most scaleups awarded by EIT Digital have grown to become internationally successful companies. Former winners of the EIT Digital Challenge include Konux from Germany, which developed a smart industrial maintenance solution and raised $16 million in Series A funding in 2017, and Quantoz who have been nominated for the European FinTech Awards 2017 for their blockchain technologies which enable instant payment and transaction settlement.
To apply, a company must be based in the EU, have had at least €300,000 in revenue in 2016 or €2 million in equity investment, and be less than 10 years old. Applications are open until October 8. Click here to apply.
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