National Bank of Greece will soon launch a new fund dedicated to startup companies, said CEO Alexandros Tourkolias, during NBG’s “i-bank Innovation & Technology” contest awards ceremony that was held on Thursday.
According to greek business news portal EMEA.gr’s exclusive information, this new fund will be managing €3mn aiming exclusively at the thriving greek startup ecosystem and it will be operating as an angel fund, allocating small amounts of money to each company and providing them with mentoring services in a strategic partnership with the greek office of the international organisation Endeavor.
Apart from acting as mentors for NBG’s funded companies, Endeavor Greece‘s network will be taking part in the decision-making process of which startups will be receiving investments from National Bank’s angel fund.
So far, National Bank of Greece was country’s only one of the five biggest private banks with no active role in startups, while Piraeus Bank runs a VC&PE Group with €150mn under management, Eurobank will be running an incubator (which doesn’t offer funding) for a second year, Alpha Bank and Attica Bank run their own venture capital firms through Alpha TANEO and Attica Ventures funds.
In NBG’s fourth installment of “i-bank” contests, 10 tech startups were awarded with €49k in total.
Official announcements about the new fund and its operations are expected from NBG side in the weeks to come.
