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

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The EU funded project “Digital Innovation Hubs Federation For Large Scale adoption of digital technologies by European SMEs” announces the results of its first call for applications: 14 applicants of the 72 eligible proposals will receive a total of over 1.1 million euro to develop their smart applications.

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 1st Open Call launched on the 17th of March 2020.

Out of the over 72 eligible proposals which involved 94 European companies included 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 Industry.

Figure 1: Open Call 1 – 72 Eligible proposals – 94 Companies

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 applying companies have a good idea of an innovation, a clear market vision and needs technical and/or business innovation expertise to validate their concept.

48 companies applied for “ingle application experiments” meaning that a single applying company will receive, alongside Cascade funding up to 55k€, technical and business expertise from DigiFed to support their project.

46 companies applied for “Twin application experiments” meaning that two partners companies from two different countries applied together and will each receive up to 55 k€ Cascade funding for supporting their project, while DigiFed will support with business innovation expertise.

Figure 2: Open Call 1 – 72 Eligible proposals – 94 applicants’ company country of origin

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

Figure 3: Distribution of Funding per Company Size

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)

Figure 4: Total Amounts Awarded per Country of Origin

DigiFed is dedicated to supporting EU industries to digitalise their product & services and reach new markets enabled by Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) & Embedded Systems. It aims to promote a total of 40 projects throughout the project’s lifetime, 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.

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

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