REACH announces 1st Call for Proposals for Startups
Deadline: 15-Feb-21
REACH – a European-wide second-generation incubator for data-fuelled start-ups & SMEs has announced 1st Call for Proposals for Startups to facilitate the development of trusted and secure innovative solutions based on industrial and personal data.
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The main objective of REACH is to launch a sustainable European-wide second-generation incubator for data-driven start-ups and SMEs. The incubator aims to stimulate the generation of 100 business ideas from SMEs and select among them 30 solid business cases based on data-driven innovation, born from experimentations on secure and trusted data value chains across several sectors. This, with the aim of launching new data-fuelled products and services to the market and leveraged by the capacities of the best data-driven DIHs in Europe.
REACH will support the selected applicant through a 11-month programme where experts in diverse fields will provide a successful working methodology, access to top infrastructure and services, training in business and data related topics, coaching, mentoring, visibility and community building support.
This 1st Open Call will accept 30 submissions led and executed by SMEs/startups, actively involved in research, development, and application activities. The selected projects should have potential to entail a substantial advance in the state of the art, delivering new services with potential to improve the European Data Market (i.e. data-oriented solutions that improve the exploitation of data assets)and/or reach the market in the short run.
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Tracks
The open call will be divided in three participation tracks. Applicants must apply for one of them:
THEME-DRIVEN (Track 1):
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Cross-sectorial Data Value Chain (DVC) themes to be tackled by participants have been defined by the REACH consortium. These DVC themes are Data Challenges on Secure and Trusted Data value Chain (e.g. tourism, energy, healthcare & insurance, manufacturing/industry…).
Applicants will select the theme from the REACH DVCs Theme page and then, choose a challenge from REACH Challenge Catalogue (tagged as being Theme-Driven), at application stage.
There will be two different DVC theme categories:
Individual DVC themes: composed by a single experiment.
Collaborative DVC themes: composed by complementary and individual experiments.
The datasets to be used in this track could be a combination of the following:
Dataset provided by REACH data providers and available at REACH Data Catalogue.
Dataset or datasets, external to REACH Data Catalogue (i.e. open data), as long as the applicant has access and processing rights to the data in compliance with data protection regulations, and has legal permission to include them in a commercial solution.
Dataset or datasets provided by Data Provider/s applicants bring to the project.
It is not it is not always necessary to have a combination of datasets to demonstrate the DVC in the experimentation. Applicants are encouraged to use datasets provided by REACH data providers. 50% of the applicants selected for the Theme-Driven will be using datasets from the REACH Data Catalogue.
READY-MADE (Track 2):
Applications will deal with challenges defined by the REACH data providers according to the needs detected in their market. Applicants will select the challenge to be solved from the REACH Challenge Catalogue (tagged as being Ready-Made), at application stage. The use of datasets from different sectors or fields to create cross-sector DVCs is encouraged.
Applicants are encouraged to combine these datasets available in the REACH Catalogue with other from other sectors (i.e. Open data). At least 20% of the selected experiments under this participation track will be cross sector.
FREE CHOICE (Track 3):
Applicants will devise novel DVCs by bringing their own data provider/s and/or their own datasets with those already facilitated within the REACH Data Catalogue. The applicant, a single SME, will apply together with their own Data Provider/s (at least one) proposing a joint challenge to be solved.
Applicants are encouraged to combine datasets from different sectors. At least 10% of the selected experiments under this participation track will be cross-sector.
IMPORTANT: For Track 1 (THEME DRIVEN) and Track 3 (FREE CHOICE), if the applicant brings its own data provider, the data provider will have to comply with the country eligibility rules (section 4.2) and follow the same rules of current REACH data providers. To sum up:to complete the Data Providers application form, as indicated in the Application Form to be filled in by the Applicant.
To sign a MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) with REACH project coordinator, Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique et aux energies alternatives (CEA), at the time of the application and before 1st April 2021. The MoU model is available here.
To sign the Sub-Grant Agreement in case of selection of the Applicant before the beginning of the incubation in April 2021. A Sub Grant Agreement template is available here.
Provide access to the data and assistance to the Sub-grantee if selected.
Participate in the meetings with the Sub-grantee organised by the project and in the evaluations in the corresponding pitches and events, if selected.
Benefits
Equity Free Funding up to €120K: Cascade equity-free funding for organizations to finance their innovations
Access to large corporations and their industrial data sets: A range of Data Providers coming from different sectors offering their data and corporate challenges for experimentationnovations
Access to digital and business skills: Data mentoring and business coaching will be available for companies to help develop their experiments and turn them into market-ready solutions
Reach toolbox for secure and trusted data value chains: Ready-to-use tools an state-of-the-art technologies for increasing trust and security in data sharing and exchange (blockchain, data anonymization and minimization components and tools for the development of trusted-by- design applications)
Big data computing infrastructure: Big Data infrastructure to host experiments and facilitate the development of data-fuelled solutions in short time
Access to private investment: A network of corporate and private investors engaged to select and potentially invest in promising companies with great go-to-market and growth potential.
Visibility: REACH will offer ecosystem and organizational visibility towards new partnerships and business opportunities
Location
Both SMEs and DPs must be established in a Horizon2020 eligible country:
The Member States (MS) of the European Union (EU), including their outermost regions;
The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States;
H2020 Associated countries: according to the updated list published by the EC. The UK applicants are eligible under the conditions set by the EC for H2020 participation at the time of the deadline of the call as long as there is a fit with any of that call challenges.
Eligibility Criteria
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The accepted applicants for REACH open calls are start-ups in the form of SMEs, that fit with the proposed participation tracks:
Individual SME experiment: Data Driven SMEs or Startups solving challenges and experiments.
Collaborative SME experiment: Several data driven SMEs will conduct different experiments under a common DVC theme or Data Provider’s challenge. This way of collaboration will be fostered by REACH partners, for example, identifying synergies among applicants along the incubation and facilitating their collaboration. The consortium will aim 20% of the experiments progressing on this collaborative scheme to contribute towards the DVC concept.
The use of big data tools is needed.
Uniqueness of the proposal.
The accepted applicants for REACH open calls are start-ups in the form of SMEs. A SME will be considered as such if accomplishing with the Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC and the SME user guide. As a summary, the criteria which define a SME are:
Headcount in Annual Work Unit (AWU) less than 250.
Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million or annual balance sheet total, less or equal to €43 million.
For more information, visit https://www.reach-incubator.eu/open-calls/startups/