COVID-19 RESPONSE HUB

EIT Climate-KIC is supporting an extraordinary call for grant applications launched by EIT and for ventures affected by pandemic crisis. This initiative is part of the EU’s response to COVID-19 and extends support of up to EUR 500,000 to climate positive start-ups, scaleups and SMEs contributing to a transition towards a net-zero carbon economy. The application deadline is 7 June 2020. Read more: https://www.climate-kic.org/get-involved/venture-funding/

EIT Climate-KIC is seeking to support the ambitious activities needed to regenerate and reboot our economies in line EIT Climate-KIC’s mission to build a prosperous, inclusive, climate-resilient society founded on a net- zero-carbon, circular economy. Activities, projects and programmes submitted in response to this call for proposals should align with our strategy, Transformation, in Time, by contributing to the achievement of system transformation towards a low-carbon economy. Deadline Stage 1 (Expression of Interest): 22 May 2020 (17:00 CET). Deadline Stage 2 (Full proposal submission): 12 June 2020 (17:00 CET). CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION.

The EIT Governing Board has decided to mobilise EUR 60 million of additional funding to innovators powering high-impact solutions that tackle this unprecedented social and economic challenge. The financing will allow the launch of new innovation projects to address the immediate crisis as part of the ‘Pandemic Response Projects’, and will support highly innovative start-ups, scale-ups and SMEs crucial to the economy’s fast recovery to benefit from additional funding under the ‘Venture Support Instrument’.

In record time this multidisciplinary and interregional Spanish team have produced a ventilator designed to help COVID-19 patients with severe breathing difficulties, meeting the medical specifications of the health authorities. The multidisciplinary team is made up of doctors, engineers, communication, data analysts, legal, design. This tool has all the functionalities of a medical ventilator with a very fast, scalable production capacity and a much lower cost than pre-existing ones. The prototype is ready, and there is an approval of the Spanish Agency of the Medication. The scientific and medical community is very receptive to this design and mechanism. They will be able to produce 50-100 units per day. Part of this huge team are Santiago Jiménez-CEO of Liight (Accelerator Participant 2019) and Javier González-CEO of Iridium (Accelerator 2017 and Pioneers-into-Practice Participant 2019) and Virginia Huidobro (Organizer Climathon 2019 Madrid).

The social enterprise Auara has already donated 236,000 bottles to hospitals with coronavirus patients. AUARA received a whatsapp from a friend asking for help: in the hospital where she worked they needed bottled water for the health staff and for the patients, to minimise the risk of contagion. That day, they sent 2,500 bottles to the hospital and posted a message offering water to any hospital that needed it. In one week they donated all they could, 65,000 bottles to a total of 27 hospitals in Madrid, Catalonia and Castile and Leon, until they realized that they could no longer do it alone and launched a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds that would allow them to continue donating our bottles to cover all the demand that would come our way. This initiative, which they called #AguaparaHospitalesCOVID19, has brought together more than 1,700 donors, individuals and companies such as Asterion Industrial Partners, which has donated the equivalent of 100,000 litres of bottled water. In total, the crowdfunding campaign (which is still open, with the option to donate from 5 Euros) has managed to reach 50,000 Euros in just 3 days . In addition, thanks to so much noise and repercussions, they have managed to contact the Community of Madrid and the Regional Government of Castile and Leon to coordinate efforts. All those hospitals or other places where they are treating patients with coronavirus who need bottled water, can contact them at hola@auara.org. Antonio Espinosa de los Monteros, CEO and Co-Founder of AUARA, was part of the EIT Climate-KIC Accelerator Programme in 2016.

Encapsulae is a startup that develops and commercializes additives for active and intelligent packaging. They have taken advantage of their technological and scientific knowledge, and their ability to set up a silver ion disinfectant plant. This new and effective disinfectant does not carry toxic substances, has 24-48 hours of residual protection, is fast-acting (between 30 seconds and 2 minutes), and does not generate aggressive vapours or skin irritation associated with traditional disinfectants. It can be applied in the presence of people and animals. This project is initiated by Javier Menéndez, CEO of Encapsulae (Accelerator Participant 2019).