The European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (EISMEA) today published the results of the evaluation of the projects presented at the March 2023 cut-off of the EIC Accelerator call. We are very proud to announce that Finapp, having won 2.08 million euros, is among the winning projects. The European Innovation Council – EIC represents the main instrument to support innovation promoted by the European Commission within Horizon Europe. The EIC, in particular, is the most relevant initiative within Pillar 3 – Innovative Europe which aims to identify and support technologies based on revolutionary and disruptive innovation that have scalability potential at European and international level and become thus a market leader, offering integrated and agile support by supporting all phases of innovation: from Research and Development (R&D) on the scientific foundations of the technologies, to their validation and demonstration. The main objective of the EIC is to respond to real needs, supporting the entire innovation cycle up to the scale-up phase and entry into the European and international market. (www.eic.ec.europa.eu).
“Finapp was born 4 years ago with the ambitious project of revolutionizing the way water is measured,” explains Stevanato, founder and administrator of Finapp. “The revolution comes through the use of cosmic rays and CRNS – Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensing – technology, which has multiple applications in Agriculture, Water Resource Management and Prevention and Mitigation of Extreme Events also resulting from climate change. We will use this support from EIC to develop additional, equally disruptive applications, this time “putting our technology on the move,” Stevanato continues. “We will be able to provide real-time, high-definition soil moisture maps for truly precision irrigation, as well as pre-locating water losses along aqueducts simply by driving a vehicle. To offer such innovative solutions in these new markets and for the mobile application, we need to further engineer the Finapp product to make it even more accurate, faster, and more compact. This is a remarkable challenge that fascinates and engages us, something never tried before, which today as never before is within our reach thanks to the fundamental contribution of the European Innovation Council. We are honored to have been selected and would like to thank the EIC for the opportunity we have been given and the entire Finapp Team for the commitment and dedication they have put into achieving the goal. For the Finapp team it is a new starting point, we are ready to begin this new revolution.”
Who is Finapp
Finapp is an innovative startup and spin-off from the University of Padua founded in 2018 by Padua entrepreneur Luca Stevanato with Angelo Amicarelli and two other researchers, Marcello Lunardon and Sandra Moretto. The company has developed a next-generation sensor to measure contactless water content of soil, biomass and snow, based on the measurement of environmental neutrons produced by cosmic rays (Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensing). In the past 12 months, the company has grown from 3 to 12 direct employees, and plans to add another10 people in the coming year. Finapp currently operates two production units in Italy and plans two foreign openings in the next 12 months. It has installed its fixed systems in 11 countries and has a plan to monitor about 25000 km of water network to be carried out in the next 12 months. After an initial investment of €200,000 from Progress Tech Transfer obtained in 2020, Finapp has received an additional €1.2 million in equity from Crédit Agricole Italia, Tech4Planet, the national technology transfer hub on environmental sustainability set up on the initiative of CDP Venture Capital, and Progress Tech Transfer Fund, a fund promoted by MITO Technology and aimed at enhancing technologies in the field of sustainability.
