KATANA

Emerging Industries as Key Enablers for the Adoption of Advanced Technologies in the Agrifood sector

Start date: 01/07/2016

Duration: 36 months

Topic: INNOSUP-1-2015 – Cluster faciltated projects for new value chains

Total budget: EUR 5 445 695

KATANA supports European SMEs and startups along the agrifood ecosystem to access knowledge, technology, capital and markets, allowing them to respond to market demands in a timely manner. KATANA provides direct financial and tailor made business support, as well as a technological infrastructure to fuel the development of highly innovative products and services.

KATANA launched two open calls to identify the most promising entrepreneurs across agrifood and tech industries in 3 categories – Precision Agriculture Services, Mobile services and Functional Foods. For the 2nd call, 54 cross-border and/or cross-country consortia proved the demand for their products and services through reward crowdfunding, and delivered minimum viable products (MVPs).

10 products and services were selected after having received the highest amount of contributions in euros, in terms of raising money and received contributions during the Reward Crowdfunding campaign. The winners will receive 100,000 EUR per consortium (20,000-50,000 EUR per SME/entrepreneur) to cover activities such as testing and marketing. In addition to the financial support, KATANA will provide the TOP10 consortia additional support services, including Investment Readiness, or Export Promotion Training. They will be given access to the KATANA Equity Crowdfunding platform in order to raise additional funding from private investors to support further expansion.

KATANA AT A GLANCE

An innovative selection & funding scheme based on peer-to-peer evaluation and reward crowdfunding

An extensive portfolio of support services covering the entire KATANA lifecycle

Three large-scale demonstrators to help bring new products & services targeting emerging industries (eco-industries, mobile services and personalized health)

OUR ROLE

Scaling-up Novel Products & ICT Services in Food and Agri

InoSens is in charge for the creation of a new Marketplace – called Pragmatic, which gives AgTech startups a new platform to showcase, market and distribute new products & services. Pragmatic is one of three free-of-charge KATANA technology platforms, with InoSens leading development, as well as initial launch activities for all three platforms. KATANA technology platforms are based on the concept of the Large Scale Demonstrator, and represent a unique and value added resource for de-risking the development and scaling-up of novel products & services in food and agri, as well as encouraging meaningful conversations between startups/SMEs and consumers/end-users. InoSens will support KATANA beneficiaries during the development process of new products/services, and is responsible for the exploitation and long-term sustainability of KATANA results.