Giving the European bio-economy a fresh boost with Bioeconomy Ventures

The Biobased Industry in Europe is a fast-paced innovation sector. Many start-ups and spin-off companies seek to access the market backed by competitive and innovative ideas. The reality, however, is that they often have a hard time surviving and perish within few years from their creation.

BioeconomyVentures aims to establish a solid sectoral-wide network that will ultimately ignite cooperation among start-ups, spin-offs and the investors’ community. The objective is to lay the groundwork for the creation of an entrepreneurial ecosystem in the biobased industry sector adopting a holistic approach. The shortcoming of most related actions in this field, in fact, is to be fragmented and to lack interconnectedness.

BioeconomyVentures launched on May 1st, 2021 and awarded for €1,5 million by the European public-private partnership Bio-Based Industry Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under Grant Agreement No 101023260, commits 9 partners from 6 different EU countries for a 30 months period to address these challenges.

The partners relying on their expertise, and on the background of the external experts involved through the BioeconomyVentures Ambassadors Programme (AAP), will equip the selected entrepreneurs with the proper financial and business knowledge and guide them to the market through matching and support activities. On the other side, investments will be incentivized by raising awareness within the investors’ community. The project focuses on a challenge driven approach: corporates’ needs will be investigated and, accordingly, they will be matched with best-fit start-ups to address such challenges. Two main tools will be developed within the scope of the project: the BioeconomyVentures Evaluation Matrix and the BioeconomyVentures Platform. The first consists of a methodology that will be developed within the consortium to properly identify and evaluate, both quantitatively and qualitatively, the entrepreneurs’ needs. The latter will be a one-stop shop platform where the brokerage services are provided and the community meets. These tools serve also to ensure that the project will continue to deliver results after its end.

On May 19th, 2021, the partners virtually gathered for the kick-off meeting, coordinated by the Irish Bioeconomy Foundation (IBF). On this occasion, they discussed in detail the project’s activities ambitions, goals and path forward.
They are now eager to ramp up the work toward a joint implementation of the BioeconomyVentures project.