More than 60 startups, including Trace Crystal, a Luxembourg startup supported by Luxinnovation, will receive up to €50,000 each from the Seeds of Bravery consortium.
Abigail Okorodus
Seeds of Bravery, a significant €20 million European Union project, recently announced its latest cohort of funded startups, marking a crucial step in supporting Ukrainian tech innovation and strengthening ties between Ukrainian entrepreneurs and the EU ecosystem.
This ambitious project, funded under the European Innovation Council (EIC), is a collaborative effort involving a network of 19 leading organisations and startup associations spanning 12 European nations.
We want to validate our technology in this field because it is the most affected, the most dangerous, and the most urgent one we need to solve.
Luxinnovation, the national innovation agency of Luxembourg, plays a vital role within this consortium, actively promoting and facilitating the programme's objectives.
In this latest funding round, Seeds of Bravery will be channelling roughly €2.2 million into the hands of promising startups. This funding support, ranging from €25,000 to €50,000, will be allocated across four programmes:
Trace Crystal is a University of Luxembourg spin-off and graduate of the Fit 4 Start programme. The company develops unique and unclonable fingerprints that help to prove the authenticity of a product, thereby tackling the pervasive global issue of counterfeiting. “We’re replacing existing technologies like QR codes or holograms with a more viable solution, because we’ve seen that these other technologies can still be copied,” points out Dr Hakam Agha, Trace Crystal’s CEO.
The financial backing from the Seeds of Bravery is a welcome boost for Trace Crystal; it will be a crucial catalyst for its next phase of development and market entry. “As a starting company, you still need a lot of non-dilutive funds in order to support yourself,” he notes. This financial support will enable Trace Crystal to strategically allocate resources towards key activities, including team expansion, further technology refinement, and crucial business development efforts. The company recently signed a pilot with a pharmaceutical company in India, some of the associated costs will also be covered by the funding.
Asides the massive financial consequences of counterfeiting, companies also stand a reputational risk. But in the pharmaceutical sector, this issue can cost lives. “We already had several partnerships and proof-of-concepts in several luxury segments. But our focus at the moment is pharma as a beachhead market,” Dr Agha clarifies. “We want to validate our technology in this field because it is the most affected, the most dangerous, and the most urgent one we need to solve. After this, we're open to provide our solution to other industries,” he adds. This pivot to pharma was a strategic decision taken following the company’s participation in the Fit 4 Start programme. “I want our solution to become a standard for pharmaceutical product authentication and tracking.”
Dr Agha credits Luxinnovation with pointing him towards the Seeds of Bravery initiative. “That’s how I learned about this funding scheme. Luxinnovation also guided me through the process step by step on how to better submit an application,” he says.
I want our solution to become a standard for pharmaceutical product authentication and tracking.
The company was also just selected to receive additional funding under the Seeds of Bravery programme. Dr Agha concludes by sharing a broader vision that aligns with the DNA of the Seeds of Bravery initiative: “With the war in Ukraine, I see a lot of opportunity for us to intervene and secure supply chains that go into Ukraine in a post-war scenario.”
Seeds of Bravery (UASEEDs) is funded by the European Union, under the European Innovation Council (EIC). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or European Commission. Neither the European Union nor the European Commission can be held responsible for them. The UASEEDs project has received funding from the Horizon Europe Framework Programme under grant agreement No 101104445.
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