The European Commission announced the grantees of the second edition of the WomenTechEU call. 134 female led deep-tech companies get supported.
The deep-tech sector in Europe is strong. Deep-tech companies in Europe are estimated to have a combined value of about €700 billion, while deep-tech Start-Ups comprise about one quarter of the European start-up ecosystem. Meanwhile, women remain largely underrepresented. This is not only an issue of gender inequality but also a matter of lost potential.
The European Commission tries to tackle this imbalance by supporting and encouraging women founders of deep-tech start-ups, a traditionally high-risk endeavour. Due to long R&D cycles, high time and capital requirements to be built and a high chance of failure in the first years, it is hard for these companies to survive the initial phase. Women, already confronted with obstacles such as gender biases and stereotypes of the deep-tech sector, are rare in the start-up system. To address this issue the European Commission (EC) introduced 2021 the WomenTechEU initiative under the European Innovation Ecosystem Work Programme.
The WomenTechEU initiative supports female-led deep-tech start-ups, with a grant of €75’000 and extensive mentoring and coaching opportunities by the Women Leadership Programme (WLP) of the European Innovation Council (EIC) Business Acceleration Services. Furthermore, the female leaders are invited to participate in InvestEU and Enterprise Europe Network events. In this way, the critical initial phase of the start-ups is planned to be facilitated. Companies are eligible irrespective of the innovation domain, as long as it has female leadership. Regardless whether a company is developing new drugs, carbon capture technologies, digital learning devices or autonomous robots, as long as it is founded or co-founded by women, or has women in a C-suite role and is registered and established for at least six months in a Member or Associated Country, it is able to participate in the scheme.
The pilot round of the WomenTechEU scheme in 2021 selected and supported 50 companies for funding, coaching and mentoring. Already the second round with a total budget of €10 million was much more successful. By the deadline on 4 October 2022, 467 applications from 35 Member or Associated States and 16 different industry sectors were submitted. About 14% of the applications were from Associated Countries like Norway or Turkiye and about 15% came from widening countries. Most of the companies were from Spain, Germany and France. After the first evaluation, an independent expert group selected the 134 funded and supported companies. The third round of the WomenTechEU scheme, which focused on consortia, already closed in March the submission deadline. It had one organisational novelty: it is now managed by an external consortium.
The Women Leadership Programme is a collaborative scheme of the EIC and the European Institute of Technology (EIT) to tackle the underrepresentation of women in leadership positions in the industry. The programme addresses female researchers and entrepreneurs from the EIC Community and the EIT supernovas, and now as well the winners of the WomenTechEU initiative. The WLP offers both online and physical training on topics like negotiation, pitching, leadership styles, marketing or public speaking. The two-hour courses are tailor-made and accompanied by networking events, as well as a personal mentoring and business coaching scheme.