Accelerating investments and partnerships for EIC High Growth deep tech beneficiaries

Project Information

EIC - ScalingUp

Grant agreement ID: 101023142

DOI

10.3030/101023142

Project closed

EC signature date 30 April 2021

Start date 1 May 2021

End date 30 April 2023

Funded under

• INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Innovation In SMEs

Total cost

€ 1 500 000,00

EU contribution

€ 1 500 000,00

Coordinated by

TECH TOUR GLOBAL EOOD
Bulgaria

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - EIC - ScalingUp (Accelerating investments and partnerships for EIC High Growth deep tech beneficiaries)

Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2023-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Deep tech companies innovate in areas of pivotal importance such as life sciences, agriculture and clean energy generation, food production. They are problem-oriented, aiming to solve urgent societal challenges. They work in directions to mitigate the effects of global problems, like climate change, for example. Because of science advancements, falling barriers and the convergence of technologies, deep tech ventures are now innovating in areas that used to be solely reserved to big corporates. In brief, deep tech ventures are fundamentally focused on providing new solutions that solve society's biggest issues which marks their undeniable importance and benefit they bring to the society. But also enabling job creation and healthy growing economies.
The overarching goal of the EIC-ScalingUP project is to create a blueprint for the EIC deep tech start-ups/scale-ups to successfully scale beyond series B and establish EIC-ScalingUP as a credential of honour for companies to be attractive for commercial investors and buyers. The project leverages on the expertise and networks of the consortium partners aiming to establish an impactful and validated blueprint (Model) bringing in corporates, investors and relevant stakeholders that can trigger and scale new partnerships and successful “exits fostering the emergence of European deep tech world-scale companies. Specifically, this translates into the following 4 objectives and related main sub-goals:
1. Identify, engage and select 50 EIC backed companies with ability to become world-scale companies, with focus on scaling beyond “series B and raising up to EUR 50m.
2. Guide growth plan and ambitions of the selected companies and create the blueprint of the EIC-ScalingUp services and to lead to a successful Series B/C round or acquisition value.
3. Support the growth and funding of selected companies by providing for each of them a customised growth plan.
4. Sharing inspirational stories of EIC deep tech companies and establishing EIC-ScalingUp as a credential of honour among Investment & Innovation communities.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

• A detailed desk research on the 3000+ companies from the wider EIC universe was conducted.
• A Selection Committee composed of 32 highly experienced experts was formed.
• The top performing EIC backed companies were chosen by the Selection Committee in a several-rounds selection process.
• Fifty outstanding companies with the highest growth and financial potential were shortlisted (with focus on country and gender balance and domain expertise). TOP50 Listing was published.
• Awareness sessions were held to present the scaling programme to these companies. As a result, 37 companies were onboarded to the EIC Growth Club, while initially 30 were foreseen to join.
• A needs interviews’ questionnaire was developed, grounding on the four fundamentals for growth (Scaling People - talents & culture, Financing growth, Market access and partnering for growth). And 37 companies and 52 investors were interviewed.
• The key account teams for each EIC Growth Club group were set and the EIC Growth Club was officially launched in early 2022. All planned advisory and growth sessions were conducted at the end of the EIC-ScalingUp project.
• Experienced external experts were recruited and allocated to the companies, matching their expertise and experience with the companies' needs.
• An Individual action plan was developed for each company out of the collaborative growth and the individual advisory sessions.
• EIC Growth Club companies were promoted on the EuroQuity platform and a Roadshow plan of events calendar was drafted and implemented to allow each of the supported companies to connect them with relevant investors and partners. The implementation of the Roadshow plan started already during the first reporting period but the bulk of the events took place during the second reporting period.
• The EIC-ScalingUp Communication plan was developed to set the guidelines for all communication and PR activities of the project.
• A successful communication campaign was set on social networks that gained a good number of followers.
• An Ambassadorship strategy was drafted – to be used as a key instrument for engaging and motivating the target audience and for promoting the project.
• A detailed editorial plan was developed following the guidelines of the Communication plan.
• Communication channels were established among the project partners to easily coordinate, exchange ideas, and plan activities (Slack, emails).
• QC&QA strategy was set up to ensure that high-quality results and satisfaction are achieved. Based on that a quality review was performed by the respective QC&QA partner before the submission of each deliverable.

As a result of the activities, exactly a year after the TOP50 publication was released by the EIC-ScalingUp consortium, an impact monitoring showed that from end of October 2021 until October 2022 the companies listed in the TOP50 had raised an additional € 545 million of which 89% was done by the EIC Growth Club Members with IQM, SMART Photonics and Lightyear leading the transaction volumes. An update 6 months later (with data from February 2023) showed that the Top50 companies had raised additional 662 million Euros since the start of the scaling programme.
Furthermore, three innovation agencies showed interest to benefit from the lessons learned and to adopt some of the blueprint produced while supporting the 37 companies which joined the scaling programme.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The information included in Section 2.1 of the DoA is still relevant and does not need to be updated, namely:
• EIC-ScalingUP project overarching goal is to create a blueprint for the Deep tech start-ups/scale-ups to successfully scale beyond series B/C. The blueprint was produced based on the learnings while supporting the 37 companies which joined the scaling programme. Furthermore, 3 innovation agencies confirmed they will adopt parts of the blueprint in their own scaling programmes.
• The project aims to support EIC beneficiaries in their growth phase to become sustainable global deep tech leaders by assuring them exposure to the top European investors and corporates; providing them individual advisory and insights from peer-entrepreneurs; assuring great visibility and PR. As such, 50 companies were identified and included in the TOP50 publication giving them visibility through dissemination of the listing. 37 out of the 50 included in the listing accepted to join the scaling programme and therefore benefitted from the scaling programme.
• An important impact of EIC-ScalingUP project is addressing the deep technologies funding gap and underlying blockers. As such, 31 experts with board level participated in the scaling programme sessions to help the participating companies identify and address their challenges.
• The project aims to address and offer solutions for the typical challenges of stakeholder’s engagement, namely that the success depends on the commitment of target companies, Investment commercial players and NPBIs and corporate stakeholders. To this end 22 online and onsite events were organised to support the companies meet investors and partners that they need for their growth.
• By all this the project aims to go beyond the state of the art, to support in such a way the selected companies so that they can scale up, close Series B/C rounds and become competitive not only on the European market.