ZABALA, Gold Member of the FIWARE Foundation, takes part in this initiative with Engineering, Platinum Member of the FIWARE Foundation, as technical partner. The project will be coordinated by the University of Deusto, in collaboration with 20 organizations from 10 European countries.

The European Data Incubator (EDI) project will boost the Big Data among European companies. The University of Duesto coordinates this consortium made up of 20 entities from 10 European countries. The project will help companies and start-ups to avoid obstacles to develop strategies for the use and exploitation of data.

The EDI project is funded by the Horizon2020 Programme of the European Commission, with the aim of promoting R&D and innovation in Big Data and a budget of more than €7M. The main goal is to reverse the role that Europe plays in the global market of Big Data, “where only two of the top 20 global companies are European”.

For this purpose, the consortium is willing to offer a “closer perspective” when the digitization of the productive fabric “is a key factor for the competitiveness of the territories “.

The University of Deusto will try to make available to the participating start-ups the data of the companies that conform the consortium and develop the infrastructure to accommodate and make available to newly created companies the data provided. Additionally, Deusto will advise on the configuration of business models and the development of the new company under the direction of the German consultancy company Etventure.

The coordinator and main researcher of the project, Diego López de Ipiña, has indicated that it is “a very motivating project” that will revert in the regeneration of the business fabric and in which the emerging companies finalists of the three editions can achieve up to 100,000 euros of European funding. “

ZABALA will be in charge of launch and management of the three calls foreseen in EDI for companies and start-ups with the use of Big Data tools for the publication, evaluation, monitoring and analysis of results. The experience of ZABALA in the coordination of the FIWARE FINODEX accelerator in which more than a hundred start-ups from 19 countries have received financing, assistance and advice to create jobs, improve business volume and obtain investments, will be key for the fullfilment of these objectives.

EDI will help European SMEs and start-ups with a high computing and storage infrastructure hosted in the cloud based on open technologies; with training and advice in the best known tools of Big Data Analytics and in the creation of business for the development of viable business ideas; as well as with financing.

The EDI project will empower emerging companies and SMEs to make use of tools to solve complex challenges in different businesses that make their data available to the project and highlight the application value that is sometimes not perceived.

The consortium is composed of managers of several acceleration initiatives within the FIWARE Accelerate programme, incubators of companies such as Deusto Entrepreneurship Center and “Etventure Seed Lab”, as well as the network of emerging companies F6s.15 data providers, from sectors such as Transport, Industry 4.0, Retail, Media & Contents, or Energy will provide data to the incubation process.