A new program to support innovative Greek Startups is implemented by the Hellenic Development Bank of Investments through resources from the Resilience and Recovery Fund, in the context of the activation of the Equity Platform tool of the “Greece 2.0” plan.
100 million euros will be invested through the ‘InnovateNow‘ programme in new venture capital investment funds aimed at strengthening the ecosystem of innovative Startups, mobilising other private equity as well.
The aim is to attract managers and private investors to make investments, but also to stimulate research and development (R&D) of cutting-edge technologies. Participants must have innovative characteristics and be active in fast-growing sectors of the economy, such as information technology, biotechnology, microelectronics, and contribute to the production process through the development of Cyber-physical systems, IoT, On-demand availability of computer system resources, cognitive computing, robotic applications, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, genomics, cyberspace, big data analysis etc. This program also gives impetus to Greek Universities and Research Institutes by promoting, in addition to the development of cutting-edge know-how, the country’s export activity.
“With the new financing tool “InnovateNow” and the contribution of the Recovery Fund, we are laying the foundations for further smart financing of innovative Startups of technology enterprises. At the same time, we contribute to the scale-up of research activity, while improving the business environment and the ecosystem of venture capital investment funds.Our aim is to create even more appropriate conditions for the repatriation of highly trained human resources, who left the country during the economic crisis.”, said the Deputy Minister for Development and Investments Yannis Tsakiris.
” “InnovateNow” frames complementary tools that have already operated, such as Equifund and others that have already been announced by ATE. In this way, we contribute to the creation of a new development framework for Startup innovation in our country.”, stated the President of HDBI, Professor Haris Lambropoulos.