"Start-up 3" provided the largest financial support for startups in the history of the Fund

The new 70 start-up projects, supported with a total of 2.6 million euros non-refundable funds, represent the largest financial support for start-up and spin-off companies in the history of FITD, pointed out Kosta Petrov, the director of FITD, at today’s presentation of the results of the public call “Start-up 3″.

Petrov added that due to the large number of quality projects, the Investment Approvals Committee requested an increase of the initially planned total budget of 2 million euros by an additional 630,000 euros.

The total investment fund for these projects is 3 million euros, of which a total of 385 thousand euros are funds that will be invested by the companies themselves.

“This is a year of record financial investments in Macedonian startups. Support through the Start-up instrument has grown dramatically over the three cycles. So, if on the first call we co-financed with about 1.2 million euros, today we are talking about support that is more than doubled. With the new number of 70 start-ups, the number of supported start-up companies in the total portfolio of FITD reached 393 companies with joint investments of as much as 32 million euros. According to the analysis we made, for startups in the period from one year before using the finances, to 2 years after their use, the average income has increased by 197%. In the same time frame, the average expenditures have increased by 220%.”, Petrov said.

Ninety percent of the supported companies are new beneficiaries of the Fund, while only 7 companies are supported for the second time. To have greater access to financial support, FITD introduced a novelty at this public call, i.e. the opportunity to apply for a project team consisting of up to 5 individuals. Out of 70 co-financed projects, a total of 31 are applicants composed of project teams who, before starting the realization of the projects, are obliged to register a company.

On the call, this time dominated four new sectors: mechanical engineering, creative industries, agriculture, technology industries. From the supported projects, innovations are noted by the pharmacist and the health industry with innovative software for the pharmaceutical companies, a concept for analysis of genetic data, the first bionic hand in the country. Agrotechnology supports projects with software for monitoring and automation of agricultural products indoors, precision agriculture and drones. In the field of Artificial Intelligence, in the development of which FITD invests intensively, new support projects are supported for analysis of unstructured texts from local languages, artificial intelligence software for the dental industry, as well as software for application of artificial intelligence in agriculture.

(The full list of supported projects is available on the FITD website)

At the press conference, the director of FITD Petrov, announced the planned activities of the Fund for 2022, especially for start-up companies. Next year, the public call “Start-up 4” is planned, a more structured investment in new categories of startups: deep tech and business impact startups. Commercialization of agricultural technologies has been announced, as well as a new call for accelerators with a focus on the investment readiness of Macedonian startups. Next year, FITD will invest in start-up hubs for the first time.

The biggest support for Macedonian startups in 2022 will come through the Hybrid Investment Fund of 27 million euros in which the state will invest 10 million euros. The investment fund will be managed by an international fund manager according to EU regulations and it will invest from 100,000 to 1.5 million euros in Macedonian startups.