New Space Global Markets Challenge
This article was published by the ESA Commercialisation Gateway, find it here.
Are you looking to increase the visibility of your product/service and scale to new potential markets?
Building on the successful experiences of the previous years’ start-up competitions, the ESA New Space Global Market Challenge aims at providing visibility, networking and matchmaking opportunities for European space start-ups in their scaling and internationalisation efforts.
Therefore the challenge has the following overarching goal “Support and promote European Space start-ups with potential to scale their solutions to new markets” and can be splitted in the associated objectives:
- Highlight and select promising European space entrepreneurs with innovative and disruptive business models,
- Raise investors’ and industrial actors’ awareness about the potential of European space start-ups and New Space,
- Provide support for internationalisation through means of increased visibility, networking opportunities, match making and other prize contributions.
In this context, ESA will select 8 start-ups in the space sector that can demonstrate the most promising and convincing internationalisation plans for their product and/or service and will offer support to increase their visibility to potential target markets, investors and industrial actors.
What is in it for you?
At this stage, this is an open call for ideas with no associated funding or contracts, so why should you take the time to provide us with your idea?
1. All submitted ideas will be assessed by a team of ESA experts.
2. We want to be ready to support initiation/initial progress of high potential ideas; to do this we need to ensure we have understood your needs. We are here to support a competitive European industry, including assisting in areas such as:
- ESA Branding and Promotion
- Network and Partnership Building
- Increase visibility to potential target markets
- Match making with potential investors/clients
3. The top 8 applicants will be provided with networking/matchmaking opportunities and invited to pitch their idea to a panel of investors, ESA experts and industry to be held at the Paris Air Show between 19th and 25th of June, 2023.
4. The two best pitches will win tickets to an international event (TBD) in support of their internationalisation plans.
Announcement of top 8 applicants will be made between may 15th and 5th of June with the top 2 winners of the pitch event to be announced at the Paris Air Show.
Please read carefully the attached documents for further detailed information on participation.
Special Conditions
The Campaign/Channel is open for submissions for participants registered in one of ESA Member States, Associate Member States or Cooperating States (link).
For general conditions of participation to this campaign, please refer to the above document.
Please note, that restrictions exist for certain implementation paths, e.g. ESA procurement actions are restricted to entities eligible for doing business with ESA (see also here).
In addition to the provisions in the General Conditions of Use of the Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP) (e.g. article VI) and the General Conditions of Participation to Campaigns and Channels organised by ESA in OSIP (e.g. article 4.3) ideas will be excluded if they do not fulfill the following elligibility conditions:
- Start-up criteria: The company should not be older than 15 years. It must have an innovative product and/or service and/or business model. The start-up has the aim to scale up, which includes the intention to grow the number of employees and/or turnover and/or markets in which it operates.
- Other specific conditions: The company must be developing space-related products or services, either for the upstream or downstream sector. The products or services promoted within the Challenge must be for peaceful purposes. General requirements of proper conduct of applications and of the members of their management team also apply.
The submission of the applicant does not require to be registered in the ESA supplier database; esa-star.
Further specific terms and conditions for participation to this call are detailed in the attachments.
Evaluation Criteria
Eligible submissions will be assessed according to the following criteria:
- Technical merit and credibility of the products/service;
- Understanding of the (target) markets and suitability of product/service for the target market(s)
- Suitability of the implementation plan
- Adequacy and credibility of cost estimations, schedule and planning;
- Team composition
General conditions of participation
Ideas should be submitted as soon as possible and not later than 03/05/2023 at 23.59 CEST
