June 7, 2021
The list of investment deals made by the EIC (European Innovation Council) fund has been recently updated including six new operations with a quite different profile than previous ones. The new operations are listed below:
| Company | Country | Mission | Field/Technology |
| Nextwave | France | The next generation of hybrid location technology and solutions for IoT. | ICT (IOT) |
| EpiEndo | Iceland | Approach to inflammatory disorders that focuses on the epithelial barrier integrity. | Health (Pharma) |
| Antofenol | France | Natural, eco-designed and anti-microbial products from agricultural waste. | Cleantech (Waste) |
| Lixea | Estonia | Innovative biomass fractionation process using low-cost ionic liquids. | Cleantech (Biomass) |
| Demeta | France | Chemistry made greener, safer and more efficient. | Cleantech (Materials) |
The profile of these operations is quite different from the first batch as we can see 3 cleantech companies and significantly lower amounts. The average key amounts for all the operations closed until today by the EIC Fund are as follows:
| Average grant | 2.097.545€ |
| Average EIC Equity | 5.497.601€ |
| Average Total Equity | 11.192.308€ |
The EIC continues making a matching investment strategy in which other investors provide about 50% of the total round.
When looking at the company profile, it corresponds to a company with a significant turnover (taken from public data) and number of employees. This reality might contrast with the so called high-risk profile of the projects that the EIC is aiming for. The conclusion may be that, although the EIC is looking for high-risk high-impact projects, they also want to invest in solid companies with a proven track-record and product-market fit. There are no investments so far in pre-revenue companies. Risky projects but solid companies.
I believe this is very relevant information for all EIC applicants. Many pre-revenue micro-enterprises are applying to the EIC blended finance operations but their chance of success might be limited.
| Average turnover | 5.085.438€ |
| Average number of employees | 41,15 |
In terms of geography, there are 5 french companies, 1 in Germany, 1 in Denmark, 1 in Belgium, 1 in Netherlands, 1 in Iceland, 1 in Finland, 1 in Estonia and 1 in Sweden. It would be interesting to know the reason behind the striking success of France-based companies.
Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay
