H2020 Project: KATANA

H2020 Project: KATANA – EMERGING INDUSTRIES AS KEY ENABLERS FOR THE ADOPTION OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES IN THE AGRIFOOD SECTOR
Coordinator: bwcon GmbH, Germany, 14 partners from 8 European countries.

Are you an individual/sole entrepreneur interested in applications of innovative technologies for agrifood domain?

Or are you a start-up/SME operating across the vast agrifood value chain, ICT sector or raising emerging technologies? If yes, join KATANA funnel and benefit from the financing and service-provision opportunities offered by one of the most innovative pan-Europen accelerators!

KATANA will distribute in total 1.2m EUR to pan-European start-ups and SMEs and empower new cutting edge tech in agribusiness acceleration!

KATANA VALUES INNOVATIVE IDEAS AND INTRODUCES EASY-TO-JOIN PROCEDURE TO MARKET TRENDSETTERS

EC-funded KATANA accelerator aims to support all European start-ups and SMEs in the agrifood value chain, ICT sector or raising emerging technologies to simultaneously access knowledge, technology, capital and markets in order to respond to the global competitive environment. KATANA aims to provide this access to start-ups and SMEs by leveraging upon the multiplier potential of cross-border/cross-sectoral collaboration and the systemic approach which homogenizes services towards the overall aim to place new products/services in the market.

In order to identify the best SMEs and start-ups in Europe, KATANA will follow steps that ensure a sustainable roadmap for the establishment of cross-sectoral and cross-border consortia-based start-ups/SMEs collaboration since the evaluation and selection process directly involves stakeholders, namely start-ups/SMEs themselves, potential customers/early adopters (reward crowdfunding) and investors (equity crowdfunding).

This is a key innovative aspect of KATANA, since it goes into a staged and agile model that enables the community to choose its most promising members, supports these members in co-creation by establishing either cross-border or cross-sectoral collaborations and motivates consortia to rapidly launch minimum viable products (MVPs) in the market and attract funding from early adopters among potential customers, through reward crowdfunding.

KATANA will support the most successful 10 European start-ups/SME consortia by providing them additional funds – up to 50k per start-up/SME – and provide them with the opportunity to attract equity funding on the top of that, by delivering tailor made investment readiness training and providing access to the community of professional investors through an equity crowdfunding platform.