EIT Digital believes in the potential of the broader Balkan region and invests in 13 ambitious entrepreneurs from Slovenia to Greece.
A total of 13 young teams have been offered the opportunity to benefit from EIT Digital's business development services under the ARISE Europe Venture Program, a new acceleration programme which is supporting innovative very early stage tech startups from the Balkans.
The selected applicants participated in an immersive <link about-us arise-europe arise-venture-program-first-selection-of-projects-and-bootcamps-in-slovenia-and-greece>bootcamp and a five-week acceleration phase earlier this year to help them on their entrepreneurial journey and, with the support of experienced mentors, run first minimum viable product (MVP) tests with customers .
Having established a legal entity to run their project, each participant has become entitled to funding of €15,000 from EIT Digital.
"ARISE has it all!"
The programme is equity based (7%) and provided in two regions by EIT Digital innovation partners ABC Accelerator and Found.ation. Applications were open to entrepreneurs from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia and Slovenia.
"I am impressed with the maturity of these young startups and entrepreneurs - and particularly with their ability to test early, iterate fast, and push towards their MVP in a very short time," noted Thanos Kosmidis, partner of Found.ation and co-founder & CEO of CareAcross.
"It is the only programme we found that actually understands early stage startups," added Miloš Jokić on behalf of Gradoid, one of the awarded enterprises. "We needed money before our incorporation, specific mentorship for our startup and the investment afterwards. ARISE has it all!"
