Within the project EU4EG, a Demo Day was organised on 22 May 2024 with the objective to facilitate the matchmaking between early-stage start-ups, in need of investments to expand/ scale-up their businesses and investors and business angels who are looking for interesting investment opportunities.
16 StartUps from the 700 Accelerator, the Allbiz Accelerator and Ohrid Blue Economy Accelerator pitched their business ideas and stood to answer questions from potential investors.
Kamperstop · A2 Digital World · Insyllium · Ohrid Marina Centar · Avifly · Originals Digital · EcoNautic Solutions · DIA · Avtopazar · Delivery Hub · Mir-Jos · Badiala · Synergy 2024 · SUP Club Ohrid · Blue X · Kamping 2020 · Creative BM&Co · Zenobe · Centra Tech · S.I.T. Engineering
You will find more information about the start-ups on the following LINK.
The future of economic growth and development of a sophisticated society are the newly formed companies, so called start-ups. In the early stage of their formation, these micro enterprises should have a clear vision of their own innovative product, production technology, scaling potential, but also know what they need for the next phase of accelerated growth.
– They need to truly understand what it takes to be successful and sustainable. One of the most important tasks of the accelerator program, which we are working on, is to give start-up companies knowledge and support so that they can really grow, said Mr. Mark Barrett, Project Manager, GIZ, EU for Economic Growth project.
The “EU for Economic Growth” project currently offers support for accelerated training and mentoring programs or in short acceleration programmes for about 20 start-ups from the first cohort of the North-East and South-West regions and from the second cohort of the Polog region.
– Our support has the form of direct investment in these start-ups, which means facilitating access to capital and new markets, business models development, etc. We will continue with such acceleration programmes for new generations of small businesses stated Mr. Zoran Martinovski, Ohrid Blue Economy Accelerator
– I am very pleased that out of the first cohort of 6 start-ups, five of them have already found investments or are in the final stage of negotiations to find investors. It shows that we, as accelerators, have done our job successfully and that these start-ups have the potential to change industries and stay in the markets they compete in, underlined Mr. Gogo Rafajlovski, 700 Accelerator – Tetovo
In order to get closer to investors, who will recognize innovative ideas, invest funds and enable the expansion and increase of their businesses, the start-up companies presented their business models on the second demo day in a row.
– Although they are still in a very early stage of development, I believe that at least a few of these companies that presented today will be able to raise some larger investments and market their products on international markets – stated Ms. Eli Zhabevska, South Central Ventures, Venture Capital Fund
One such is the “Badijala” mobile application, whose presentation was selected as the best at the event, which in one place collects all the products that are on sale in markets and drugstores, thus saving up to 30% on purchases.
– With the investment, we will mostly work on the development of the application, including artificial intelligence, we will allocate a part for promotion and we will spend a part for spreading in the Balkans, explained Ms. Gjorgi Filipovski, owner and founder of the mobile application “Badiala”.
For investors, the most important thing is the start-up team, the product/service, what problem the product/service solves, how global the problem is and what are its potentials for placement on the domestic or international market.
EU for Economic Growth project is co-funded by the EU and the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action, implemented by GIZ North Macedonia and AREA Science Park from Trieste, Italy.
