Ireland punches above its weight when it comes to securing financing from the European Innovation Council, which provides both grants and equity funding to deep tech companies, a new report shows.
The study shows Irish companies secured a combined €45.5 million in funding from the EIC’s accelerator last year, the seventh largest figure received out of 23 countries. Of this, €23 million was equity financing.
The data, which has been compiled by Lira, a Dublin-headquartered venture funding advisory firm, shows Ireland had the highest success rate in applications being accepted for funding last year. Overall, Irish companies secured on average €6.5 million per firm from the EIC in 2021, the sixth highest amount in Europe.
The EIC’s accelerator supports high-potential, high-risk start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs to develop innovations, providing grant funding of up to €2.5 million for innovation development costs and direct-equity investments of up to €15 million. The programme is open to companies making good progress in commercialising products capable of creating new markets or disrupting existing ones.
“Ireland has been consistently strong in securing funding through the EIC accelerator,” Emmanuele Angione, managing partner at Lira said. “Ireland has the highest success rate in terms of submitted full-applications/winners ratio. However, Irish med tech companies are dominating the scene. 80 per cent of the Irish winners are med tech companies.”
Among the Irish start-ups to have received EIC funding in recent years are InVera Medical, Loci Orthopaedics, Selio Medical, Ovagen, RemedyBio, CroíValve, Coroflo, Bluedrop Medical and Perfuze.
In 2021, 164 companies secured funding via the EIC with close to €1 billion provided. Of these, however, just 30 were led by female founders.
Source: Business Post
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