A new European Commission funded startup accelerator, Data Pitch, is being launched today with the aim of connecting recognized organizations and organisations with lots of facts with startups who might be equipped to assistance them unlock the value of the information they hold and thereby tackle industrial and societal issues.
The EC suggests it’s committing €7.one million into “data pushed innovation” around the following a few several years, with €4.8M going directly to fund startups and SMEs via this “startup-company collaboration” Data Pitch plan.
Data Pitch will provide up to fifty European startups and SMEs with up to €100,000 in fairness cost-free funding, it said today, as properly as mentoring, expense alternatives, and obtain to facts from recognized organizations and the public sector — with each program operating for six months.
A spokeswoman instructed us that Data Pitch will operate across Europe, with the aim getting to accelerate between two to three cohorts per 12 months. Startups will be equipped to implement for a area from July one, 2017, with successful teams selected in Oct and November, and the initial cohort joining the plan in December.
“The ambition is to develop an innovation ecosystem for Europe, exactly where much larger organisations function intently with agile startups to innovate and master from each and every other, making use of data as an enabler to solve troubles,” the EC said in a assertion.
The funding for the initiative is coming from the EU’s Horizon 2020 plan. And the three-12 months facts-centered accelerator job will be sent by The College of Southampton, the Open up Data Institute, Portuguese accelerator organization Beta-i and French facts marketplace platform Dawex.
If you are finding a feeling of déjà vu that’s because the EC funded a related job in 2014, referred to as the Open up Data Incubator Europe (Odine) — also giving the very same amount of funding to startups to do creative and ground breaking matters with facts. That a few 12 months job led to fifty seven profitable initiatives making €16M in sales and expense and making 268 jobs, in accordance to the EC.
In phrases of certain areas of interest for the new facts accelerator, the spokeswoman said the program has an “open brief” and will be led by “the datasets accessible from facts providers”, despite the fact that it does also intend to framework this into a set of sector-distinct tracks and issues — determined in discussions with market leaders and authorities around coming months.
Among the the areas and issues it’s going to take into consideration are:
- Wise Metropolitan areas
- Foodstuff & agriculture
- Overall health & wellbeing
- Retail
- Data Privateness
- eTourism
- Finance and Telecoms
Data-pushed hackathons (aka ‘datathons’) will be utilized to define issues, with the accelerator organizing to partner with established hackathons across Europe — these kinds of as Pixels Camp, Angelhack, Hack HPI and The Port Hackathon in Cern — as properly as taking crowdsourced solutions to feed into these concept sourcing functions, the initial of which will kick off this spring.
To give you an concept of the sorts of initiatives Data Pitch might fund, the spokeswoman said it’s drawing on the Open Data Obstacle Series as its model — providing an illustration from that plan where applicants for a Crime and Justice keep track of had been asked to post products and products and services making use of open facts that would increase community involvement with the prison justice system create further evidence for what are successful interventions for rehabilitation and address the rise in individual criminal offense.
The winner in that instance, Check out That Bike!, is a cost-free on the internet service that lets people check no matter if a 2nd-hand bicycle they want to invest in has been previously stolen — with the service tapping into (open) databases of stolen bicycle facts (these kinds of as law enforcement facts, countrywide and local registers, companies, insurers) and also the Bing research engine to determine criminal offense incredibly hot places. The group seemingly also tends to make use of Independence of Data requests to try out to get far more law enforcement forces to open facts on bicycle unique body figures that have been registered as stolen.
Commenting on Data Pitch in a assertion, Elena Simperl, professor at the College of Southampton and job director for the accelerator plan, said the aim is to develop “a European ecosystem for facts-pushed innovation”.
“In the digital age, each organisation, public or personal, big or smaller, generates and owns substantial facts belongings. Not all them have the possibility to use this facts successfully. With Data Pitch we consider an recognized open innovation model and implement it at European scale — we pair some of the most creative entrepreneurial minds in 28 international locations and assistance them to solve facts issues that subject — for the financial state, for the setting, for science, and for culture as a full.”
Startups wanting to apply for the Data Pitch plan need to —
- be registered with the European Commission
- have a lot less than 250 staff
- have a lot less than €50 million turnover
- be one corporations only, consortia are not authorized
- qualified international locations are EU member states, related international locations qualified to get Horizon 2020 funding
In the scenario of the British isles, which previous month initiated the two-12 months negotiation process of leaving the European Union, the spokeswoman confirmed British isles startups can however implement to the plan even though Data Pitch is envisioned to run till the end of 2019 (so following the exit process must have concluded).
“The British isles government has re-assured organisations that have been awarded EU resources prior to March 2019 — which will be the scenario with all startups in Data Pitch — that they will be supported monetarily via countrywide resources,” she famous.
Showcased Image: Anton Balazh/Shutterstock (Image HAS BEEN MODIFIED)
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