The European project DIVA has a new round of funding of EUR 1.38 million to support SMEs

The European project DIVA, coordinated in Portugal by INESC TEC and INOVISA, will launch the second edition of a support programme to SMEs in November. There is EUR 1.38 million available in order to support projects led by Portuguese, Spanish, French, Greek, Italian and Irish companies that submit technology-based and innovative projects with application in the agrofood, environment and forestry sectors.

Applications are open from 26 November of 2019 to 31 January of 2020 on the projects’ website. SMEs, including young companies and startups, that are legally constituted and established in one of the six countries concerned, may apply.

For what purpose? To fund the development of new products and services through several typologies of vouchers:  maturation vouchers worth EUR 10.000, to support proofs of concept; demonstration vouchers to support the development of demonstrators in a real environment, worth EUR 25.000 for the small scale demonstration and EUR 60.000 for the large scale demonstration; and internationalisation vouchers worth EUR 30.000 to support the development of internationalisation strategies.

Companies may seek support and ask questions until 15 January, through the email: diva@inesctec.pt .

DIVA is a European project that is being developed at INESC TEC by the Centre for Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CITE), the Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE) and the Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems (CRIIS).

The first edition of the programme

There were 147 applications received by the DIVA project in the first edition of the programme, 66 of them were awarded vouchers worth a total of EUR 1.320 million. Out of these 66, 10 applications were Portuguese, representing 21 SMEs, which received four maturation vouchers, five demonstration vouchers and one internationalisation voucher.

Among the Portuguese projects that received support in the first edition of the programme there are, for example, a development project of a wildland fire detection system or a solution for the real-time monitoring of the vinification process.

DIVA (boosting innovative Digitech Value chains for Agrofood, forestry and environment) is funded by the European Union’s H2020 INNOSUP research and innovation programme.

More information on this project can be found here.