The South East Innovators Challenge(SEEIC) is the pilot initiative of the SEE Science & Tech Parks Alliance. Its aim is to foster innovation and technology transfer across South East Europe through entrepreneurship and startup collaboration.
SEEIC gathers the best startup companies from the tech park and innovation areas from Bulgaria, Serbia, Turkey, Romania and Greece. It unites them in a 3 day startup forum at the end of October in Sofia, where they will learn, explore and challenge their limits and abilities to create new joint ventures and pitching their idea in front of investors for funding.
The organizes for the pilot edition of the challenge are JOIST from Greece, Sofia Tech Park and Gabrovo Tech Park from Bulgaria, OSTIM Techopark from Turkey, Science Technology Park Nis & Science Technology Park Novi Sad from Serbia, Magurele Science Park from Romania.
SEEIC ultimate goal is to create opportunities for common projects and investments in the Balkans and make the region the next Silicon Valley.
We invite startup companies from the network of the JOIST IP (Greece), Sofia Tech Park (Bulgaria), Science Technology Park Nis & Science Technology Park Novi Sad (Serbia), Ostim Teknopark (Turkey) and Magurele Science Park (Romania) to submit their applications by August 31st, 2024.
Each organizer will select the most distinguished two companies which will participate in the final forum on 28 to 30th of October 2024 in Sofia.
General selection criteria are listed below, but each member organization of the challenge can add additional criteria for its internal selection. For further information, please contact the local technology park or innovation area.
Part of the tech park ecosystem or innovation zone
Early stage start-up (up to 5 years since company registration )
Industries or knowledge domains: AI, Big Data, IT, Life Science, Renewable Energy
Must have an established team
TRL 4-6
We encourage companies to form joint venture
From TRL 6 and above
We encourage to find partners