Women Tech Europe Support Scheme: Women TechEU

Programme(s): HORIZON.3.2 - European innovation ecosystems

Topic(s): HORIZON-EIE-2023-CONNECT-01-01 - Organisation of the Women TechEU Scheme

Call for proposal: HORIZON-EIE-2023-CONNECT-01

Funding Scheme: HORIZON-CSA - HORIZON Coordination and Support Actions

Grant agreement ID: 101133528

Objective:
Entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth and societal progress, yet women remain underrepresented in the field, accounting for less than a third of entrepreneurs in EU. This under-representation not only highlights inequality but also limits EU's potential to tackle pressing challenges, such as the digital, green, resilience transition, and recovery from the pandemic. Deep tech sectors are even less balanced, and investment for women-led companies remains less than 2% of the total To address this gender gap, Women TechEU will bridge collaboration between the European Commission and pan-European deep tech women-led startups to create a more gender-balanced entrepreneurship ecosystem. Built on the exisisting foundations of the EIC Women TechEU initiative, our consortium will scale this iniatiative with a clear perspective towards long-term sustainability We will invest 12M€ in equity-free grants to 160 women-led deep tech companies and additional support services in a programme enhancing current EIC BAS to which we will link The consortium is comprised by partners covering all the expertise and geographies needed to reach over 15000 women entrepreneurs in deep tech from all over Europe. Led by EIT Manufacturing, it is strengthened with the participation of other KICs from EIT like Health, Food and Climate, leveraging the power of their network and landmark events. We also count with the expertise from Sploro in cascade funding programmes. Across Limits will guide the communication and dissemination activities as well as link in the service delivery with Awaken Hub, who will coordinate an effort to evaluate over 1500 experts in 4 different open calls. The consortium is complemented by major networks of investors and women entrepreneurs like EBAN, AFAEMME, WA4STEAM or FI Values and purpose driven we will search for sustainability and major impact of the initiative during the project and beyond even proposing a PPP structure to further exploit the project results.