Dates:
- Competition closes: 14 August 2024, 11am
- Applicants notified: 8 October 2024
Scope
Projects must demonstrate:
- A clear route to market, link to innovation and evidence a team can be created to deliver the project.
- If funded, have significant impact on the market, be scalable and attractive to other equity investors.
Specific Themes
Most of the funding for the Future Economy Investor Partnership programme has been fully committed, specific themes with remaining funding available are:
- Mindset: application of extended reality for digital mental health, including immersive content that could be delivered as a digital mental health therapeutic in formal healthcare settings.
- Creative Catalyst: projects within the creative industries, underpinned by innovative digital technology, focussing on subsectors, e.g., advertising and marketing; animation; architecture; arts and culture; crafts; design; fashion; film TV and video; games, publishing, photography, publishing; music and radio
Projects that will not be funded
Projects not carried out by SMEs; Collaborative R&D projects; those not part of a company’s growth plan; projects unable to demonstrate potential return on investment and growth; projects that have not been invited by a specified investor partner; projects that are large capital infrastructure; projects dependent on export performance or dependent on domestic inputs usage will not be funded.
Eligibility
Applicants must be a registered UK SME and able to raise aligned finance required to draw down the award, through the issue of new shares or convertible debt; must have discussed and agreed proposal with investor partner before applying; project work must be carried out in or from the UK and project results exploited in or from UK; Subcontractors are allowed, preferably UK-based, with appropriate and justified costs; Subsidy Control and EC State Aid funding rules apply.
Funding Rates
Grant funding from IUK dependent on applicants receiving a minimum level of investment, led by investor partner. Minimum level of investment dependent on research level. Feasibility Studies: £50,000 and £300,000; 6-12 months duration; Industrial Research: £100,000-£1 million; 6-12 months duration; Experimental Development Projects: £250,000 and £2 million; 12 months duration.
| Project maturity (up to but not including commercialisation) | |||
| Organisation size | Feasibility (TRL 2-3) |
Industrial Research (TRL 3-5) |
Experimental Development (TRL 6-7) |
| Micro/small business | <70% | <70% | <45% |
| Medium sized business | <60% | <60% | <35% |
For Feasibility and Industrial Research, the investment led by the investor partner must be at least equal to the grant funding, Experimental Development must be at least twice as much as the grant funding.
How PNO can support you
The UK team has a strong track record in securing some of the most competitive national and European grants on behalf of its clients, with a full understanding of how a project should be presented to stand the highest chance of success. Each year in the UK alone, we are responsible for the submission of more than 100 funding applications across all sectors and priority areas. Based on this extensive experience, through careful project selection and using key insight into how a project should be best positioned, we consistently achieve success rates that are more than 5 times the typical success rates for UK national schemes and EU programmes.
