Call for Business Creation for the Business Plan 2023-2025

EIT Urban Mobility aims to become the reference impact investor in urban mobility start-ups. Sustainability, team diversity and core Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) business values are the cornerstones of our investment thesis that focuses on early-stage companies.

Business Creation leads the activities related to investments and, overall, programmes that provide support to start-ups. The Business Creation programmes help business ventures become successful. They do so by providing a new business-friendly environment, offering start-ups and scale-ups training, advice, funding, and networking opportunities. Ultimately, the Business Creation programmes are intended to be a funnel to the EIT Urban Mobility investment arm for the top performers of each programme and supported start-ups. The funnelling mechanism is the result of scouting, evaluating and selecting the most promising early-stage companies whilst also giving recommendations for investment in top performers.

For the Business Plan 2023-2025, Business Creation specifically looks for actions to continue and improve content, formats, and execution of its programmes. The call is also looking to provide Living Labs and pilot opportunities to the start-ups and scale-ups supported in the programmes.

Dates  – Call opening: 21 July 2022
– Call closing:  21 September 2022 at 17:00 CET
– Eligibility and admissibility check: September 2022
– Evaluation of proposals: October 2022
– Communication of results: November 2022
Total Budget allocated to this call The total maximum EIT funding allocated to this call for 2023-2025 is up to 2,880,000.00 EUR (320,000.00 EUR proposal/year)
Link to the submission portal  The PLAZA platform will be available as of 21 July 2022
List of documents to be submitted Application form available on the PLAZA platform
List of documents to take into consideration – Call manual 
– EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Agenda 2021-2027
– List of KPIs 
– Guidelines for applicants
– Eligibility of expenditure
– Appeal procedure
– Activity implementation handbook
– Horizon Europe Model Grant Agreement (especially articles 16 and 17)
Short summary of the topics to be addressed Accelerator Programmes
EIT Urban Mobility – Business Creation Accelerator programmes provide support for innovative mobility solutions by nurturing start-ups. There is one cohort of supported start-ups per year and programme. The Accelerator programme offering to start-ups includes their participation in Living Labs and business coaching as well as urban mobility-specific expertise such as technology or market validation, product-market fit or market entry. Business Creation aims to expand the portfolio of programmes with a maximum of three new accelerators. The current Accelerator programmes are: 5GTURBO, E+ Mobility, Energy and Public Realm, Sustainable City Logistics, and Urban Air Mobility.

Technology Transfer Programme
The implementation of a Technology Transfer Programme (TTP) aims to connect scientific and technological talent with entrepreneurial and business acumen professionals to create highly innovative science-based start-ups or spin-offs. These companies will be incorporated thanks to the funding and resources provided by EIT Urban Mobility and will transform specific results of scientific research and entrepreneurial spin-offs from universities and research centre into sellable and scalable products or services.

Evaluation criteria For the Strategic Fit evaluation:
– Fitting with Call scope and EIT Urban Mobility challenges at which the project proposal has been submitted, including the alignment with the Knowledge Triangle concept
– Addressing the EIT Urban Mobility Strategic Objectives (reflected at the strategic Agenda)
– The proposal provides a credible strategy for financial sustainability and contributes to achieve EIT Urban Mobility’s vision to become an impact investor in urban mobility start-ups

For the full proposal evaluation:
– Excellence, novelty, and innovation
– Impact and financial sustainability, and
– Quality and efficiency of the implementation, including sound financial management

Info sessions

To get familiar with the call specific requirements and get training on the preparation and submission of your proposal, you can watch the recordings of the information sessions:

Source: EIT Urban Mobility