KATANA Open Call 1 – Call for teams

Deadline: Feb 28, 2017  
CALL EXPIRED

1. Overview

1.1 Background information on KATANA

“KATANA - Emerging industries as key enablers for the adoption of advanced technologies in the agrifood sector" supports European SMEs in the agrifood value chain to simultaneously access knowledge, technology, capital and markets in order to respond to the global competitive environment. KATANA aims to provide this access to companies by leveraging upon the multiplier potential of cross-border/crosssectoral collaboration and the systemic approach which homogenizes services towards the overall aim to place new products/ services in the market.

For whom: SMEs and single entrepreneurs from the agrifood value chain (farmers, food producers, retailers, nutritionists etc.), ICT and internet based SMEs, SMEs active in emerging industries (e.g. eco sustainability, mobile markets, and functional foods)

Objective: KATANA aims to support the use of advanced technologies within the agrifood sector and to boost the development of innovative products and services in the field

Reason: In order to cope with a growing awareness for nutrition and health issues, an increasing demand for sustainability in supply chains and the breakthrough of ecommerce and mobile marketing in relation to agrifood products, the way of doing business in the sector is currently being transformed

How: KATANA addresses the traditional agrifood value chain in order to strengthen cooperation and support the smallest market players in accessing knowledge, technology, capital and markets. A customized set of financial and support services will be provided to selected participants who also get the chance to

participate various matchmaking events, an investor forum as well as e-pitches in front of market players, investors and business angels.

Areas of interest: eco sustainability, mobile markets for agriculture, functional food, supply chains in agribusiness.

When: From July 2016 to December 2018.

Funded by: European Commission, Horizon 2020 Programme

1.2 Target topics

KATANA project is focused on three specific topics: Precision Agriculture for sustainable farming, Mobile Services in Accessing Agrifood Markets and Functional Foods for personalized nutrition. These categories are the ones that every proposal should be targeting to. Every proposal should address at least one of the three topics. The specific topics are closely presented below:

1.2.1 Precision Agriculture for sustainable farming

Proposals that target Precision Agriculture (PA) should address the need of farmers for affordable precision agriculture services. Newly developed solutions should enable farmers to exploit the high potential of PA for achieving cost reductions and increased profitability sector, allowing for a more efficient utilisation of resources, and agricultural consultants PA solution providers to provide high quality services to their customers. Typical projects under this domain could be aimed to optimize processes such as tillage, seeding, fertilization, herbicide & pesticide application, harvesting and animal husbandry. Controlled Traffic Farming (CTF) and auto-guiding systems are some of the solutions in the field of Precision Agriculture.

Applicants will have to develop their solution by using the elements of KATANA PA Marketplace. PA Marketplace will address the need of farmers for affordable precision agriculture services. The platform will be driven by its users, farmers, agricultural consultants and PA solution providers who will co-create and test services. This will enable farmers to exploit the high potential of PA for achieving cost reductions and increased profitability, allowing for a more efficient utilisation of resources, and agricultural consultants PA solution providers to offer high quality services to their customers. Example: Drone and sensor-based smart farming service: Innodrone Ltd is a start-up in Aarhus, Denmark, engaged in providing drone-based solutions. In the course of KATANA they collaborate with Nikos Vasiliadis, a Greek agronomist and an Italian company called Sensoriada Ltd, to provide an innovative service for the collection and archiving of data on crops and their presentations to the farmers. The source of crop data is two-folded: aerial images and sensor measurements. The aerial images are taken using an unmanned aerial vehicle equipped with cameras (RGB, NIR, IR, multispectral, etc.), while mobile sensor stations are used for monitoring changes in temperature, humidity, pH, etc. Such information provides a comprehensive image of crops growth and indications of its changes due to diseases, lack of fertilization or inadequate agricultural technical actions.

The PA marketplace is the platform upon which they construct their service in the following way: The agronomist bids for farmers’ requests for services related to disease and fertilization management, charging an overall price per hectare and per cultivation season. Then he sends the digital map of the farms to the sensor company and receives back a full set of sensors for this particular field accompanied by full instructions on installation. Through the service provided by the drone company he rents a number of flight hours per month and receives back processed images that allow him to provide site specific consultation to farmers. The three companies use the PA Costs calculator to apply a revenue sharing model, taking into account all costs related to the service. On the basis of this business model they start a crowdfunding campaign in KATANA where they offer a special price per hectare to farmers and promote it heavily among young farmers and agricultural cooperatives.

1.2.2 Mobile Services in Accessing Agrifood Markets

With the rise of mobile services and the Internet of Things (IoT), the agrifood market has the potential to be disrupted with new services regarding the wholesales from producer to customer. Typical projects under this domain should build apps for mobile marketing of agrifood products, by leveraging upon the capabilities of IoT. Apps running on mobile devices or smart home kitchen appliances will be eligible as well. Applicants will have to develop their solution using the KATANA VRM architecture. VRM stands for "Vendor Relationship Management". VRM tools provide customers with both: independence from vendors and better ways of engaging with vendors. KATANA VRM platform will support the setup of mobile concepts such as direct sales from agrifood producers, same day delivery, shopping on demand and share economy. Matching results will be improved by real time information of connected things and devices. To build such dynamic services the KATANA mobile VRM platform will provide an open API architecture with unitized tools for stakeholders to setup own mobile apps and to connect their existing service to the supply chain. Overall KATANA mobile VRM aims to be more economic and less data proceeding than today’s CRM driven retail in the agrifood supply chain.

Example: Traceability app for fresh seafood: Mariscos frescos is a small company in Vigo, Spain engaged in packaging, wholesale and distribution of fresh seafood. They buy seafood from fishermen and deliver it to small fish shops around Spain. In the course of KATANA they cooperate with a Slovenian startup called Trace.It to develop Seafood Watch, a traceability app for fresh seafood. The app will provide information to consumers and other interested parties about the packaging, transportation and storing conditions of seafood and gets feedback from them. Seafood Watch allows fishermen, packers transporters and retail fish shops to fill-in any kind and level of information that will enhance the added value of their products if seen by the customers. This process, will pair the information inserted by the users with the product through a QR-code sticker which will bear a unique connection with the database where the users will insert information. Consequently the application will ensure the identification of every LOT of products allowing traceability for the products involved in the process. The underlying business model foresees that retail fish shops will have their own individual UI to communicate with customers and they will pay a small commission fee for the seafood sold through the app. The two companies use the mobile interface, the same-day delivery API and the toll for location based services of the KATANA toolbox to connect consumers with high quality fresh fish provided in the fish shop near them. Once they prepare the app prototype they start a crowdfunding campaign in KATANA aiming at both fish shops and consumers, offering special prices to early adopters.

1.2.3 Functional Foods for personalized nutrition

Nowadays, food standards are continuously changing due to socio-cultural environment, fashion or advertising. Consumers have turned to the consumption of functional foods that provide beneficial properties to human health. On the same context, personalized foods and diets are also designed in order to adapt the food to each individual depending on the age, gender, activity, habits, tastes, or associated diseases. As a result, food companies are interested in producing new and innovative products with determined health benefits targeted to specific groups of people. A strong need has arisen for companies to have access both to nutritional aspects and to technologies of producing innovative products with beneficial properties and increased shelf-life, in order to sustain competitiveness and to ensure the company’s growth. So far, few web-based tools for the design of personalized nutrition are available, containing databases of healthy and delicious recipes, tailored for a range of health conditions, depending on their nutritional and chemical content.

Applicants will have to develop their product by using the web platform - FunFood platform - that will be user friendly and will be able to give the opportunity to the user to adapt the tool directly to his/her criteria and needs. The platform will suggest new processes and recipes for functional foods that can be adopted by SMEs in order to design products with beneficial health properties for specific groups of people.

Typical projects under this domain could be aimed to address the needs of companies for innovation, competitiveness, sustainability and flexibility to legislation changes. A Web-platform that integrates the nutritional and the technical part of producing novel products with required health characteristics and more efforts are needed in target-group oriented food. Novel technologies that are economically affordable, easy to use, sustainable and available by the participating consortium, as well as industrial and RTD experts will also be suggested.

Example: New Juice products with desirable functionalities targeted to specific groups: Martin Alfonso is an organic fruit and vegetable producer from Valencia Spain, recently awarded for the premium quality of his products in an international exhibition in Vienna. However, he wants to expand his activities by valorizing the wastes from the fields. In Vienna he made a contact with BioJuices SA, a small Italian company producing juices of high nutritional value. Together they are planning to design functional juices based on fruits and vegetables for particular target groups, such as athletes, children and pregnant women. Based on that they establish a collaboration with Agata Gozdzik, a nutrition scientist from Poland. The nutritionist provides the requirements according to the particular profile of each group. Based on these nutrient requirements KATANA FunFood toolbox will propose different scenarios (bioactive compounds category, new innovative processes, etc.). The juice company will then choose from the proposed scenarios in order to develop specific products for particular target groups.

Additional information of the chosen products such as market analysis, cost analysis, recipes and legislation will be also available. The consortium of three (3) European SMEs starts a crowdfunding platform offering packs of juices to supporters and various promotional material to early supports.

Important notice 1: The examples above are indicative aiming to give concrete examples to interested applicants. Any other solution not specifically mentioned as an example, but contributing to one of the three axes is also eligible. Additionally, all companies and people names mentioned above are totally fictional and any similarity with reality is totally due to coincidence.

 

KATANA foresees a funnel approach implemented through 2 Open Calls. The first call, the “Call for Teams” aims to identify the best teams across the value chain through an innovative peer-to-peer evaluation method. Through this process 100 beneficiaries (SMEs or individual entrepreneurs) from all over Europe will be selected. These beneficiaries will receive small direct financial support (2,000 EUR) aiming to cover part of their travel costs but most important, they will receive a bouquet of supporting services (Matchmaking facilities, Comprehensive on-line training program and 3-days on-site bootcamp). The purpose of these services is two-fold: (i) to bring them in contact with the other KATANA beneficiaries, namely other European players across the value chain, so as to form consortia and prepare their products/services for the second Open Call and (ii) to support SMEs and entrepreneurs in defining and finetuning their ideas about new products/services.

 

3. Open Call 1 – Call for teams

3.1 Applicants eligibility

The accepted applicants for KATANA Open Call 1 – Call for teams have to be:

• Natural persons and companies that comply with the Commission Recommendation for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) 2003/361/EC1

• Located in Eligible countries

• From following sectors: ICT and internet based business companies, companies from the agrifoodvalue chain or companies active in emerging industries that are in focus of the KATANA project (eco sustainability, mobile markets and personalized health) Important notice 2: Individual persons or representative of the companies can apply to KATANA. Natural persons are eligible only in the application phase. When entering the 1st stage of KATANA, selected

Beneficiaries will have to register in order to sign the Travel Grant Agreement and perceive the 2,000 EUR funding. However, it is sufficient when only one representative member of a team registers.

3.1.1 Definitions of SMEs

A SME will be considered as such if accomplishing with the European Commission Recommendation 2003/361/EC52 and the SME user guide3. As a summary, the criteria that define a SME are:

• Independent, partner or linked enterprises, with financial and staff figures calculated in accordance to instructions given by Recommendation 2003/361/EC to fulfil SMEs criterion.

• Headcount in Annual Work Unit (AWU) less than 250.

• Annual turnover less or equal to €50 million OR annual balance sheet total less or equal to €43 million.

3.1.2 Eligible countries

Participants, either SMEs, Start-ups established in the following countries and territories or natural persons that are residents of the following countries will be eligible to receive funding through Horizon 2020 grants4:

a. European Union countries including their overseas departments European Union countries: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom; The Overseas Countries and Territories (OCT) linked to the Member States: Anguilla, Aruba, Bermuda, Bonaire, British Indian Ocean Territory, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Curaçao, Falkland Islands, French Polynesia, French Southern and Antarctic Territories, Greenland, Montserrat, New Caledonia, Pitcairn Islands, Saba, Saint Barthélémy, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Sint Eustatius, Sint Maarten, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Wallis and Futuna.

 

b. H2020 Associated countries5: Iceland, Norway, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Turkey, Israel, Moldova, Faroe Islands, Ukraine, Tunisia, Georgia;

3.2 General information

3.2.1 Important Dates

KATANA Open Call 1 – Call for teams will be launched on 01 December 2016. The submission deadline time will be on 28 February 2017 at 17:00 CET (Central European Time).

Any proposal submitted after 28 February at 17:00 CET will be automatically rejected from the Call.

3.2.2 Projects Funding

Supported by the European Union (EU), KATANA will give selected SMEs, Start-ups and natural persons access to a total grant of 200,000€ in the 1st project stage. 100 selected KATANA beneficiaries will receive vouchers for traveling allowing them to attend regional matchmaking workshops. The value of each voucher will be 2,000 €.

3.2.3 Means of submission

KATANA.eval - http://katanaproject.eu/apply-now/ - a software platform intended to enable pitches submission and evaluation performed by the teams/applicants - will be the entry point for all proposals/pitches in the Open Call 1.

3.2.4 Language

English is the official language for both KATANA Open Calls. Submissions done in any other language will not be evaluated.

3.2.5 Application type

The pitch video must be submitted electronically in a format of a valid YouTube link for video without restrictions for reviewing. The pitch should be a presentation of the applicants’ competencies, their understanding of the dynamics across the value chain and their vision of the sector. Take note that is in the applicants’ interest that the videos are of high quality, minimum required resolution is VGA video quality (640x480).

3.2.6 Origin of the funds

Any selected proposer will sign a dedicated Travel Grant Agreement with the KATANA coordinator. The funds attached to the Travel Grant Agreement come directly from the funds of the European Project KATANA via the European Commission Grant Agreement Number 691478, and are therefore, funds owned by the European Commission.

As it will be defined in the Travel Grant Agreement template, this relation between the sub-grantees and the European Commission through the KATANA project carries a set of obligations to the sub-projects with

5 http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/3cpart/h2020-hi-list-ac_en.pdf

the EC. Selected beneficiaries will be obligated to travel to Matchmaking events organized by KATANA, actively participate and connect with other KATANA beneficiaries and stakeholders.

3.2.7 Number of proposals per applicant

The applicants can submit only one proposal.

3.2 KATANA services for 1st stage beneficiaries

KATANA envisions the provision of a broad range of services to its 1st stage beneficiaries, including:

Financial support (the best 100 applicants will receive 2.000,00 EUR as a travel voucher per each) and various business services like Matchmaking facilities, a comprehensive Training Programme and an On-site Bootcamp.

3.3.1 Financial support

100 selected KATANA beneficiaries will receive travel vouchers aiming to cover part of their travel costs allowing them to attend regional matchmaking workshops. The value of each voucher will be 2.000,00 EUR.

3.3.2 Matchmaking facility

Building partnerships requires trust. Therefore, KATANA aims to bring together as many 1st stage beneficiaries as possible in seven regional matchmaking workshops. The workshops shall facilitate the exchange between the SME participants and support them in finding suitable consortium members for 2nd stage applications.

The workshops will follow a concept that allows participants to get to know each other and to create teams around specific ideas. The concept that will be applied is part of the entrepreneurship methodology Effectuation (Sarasvathy, 2009) and aims to enable beneficiaries to enter in dialogue about ideas, visions and potential collaboration spaces. Thus, the claim accompanying the workshops is “Where ideas and people meet”.

Each of the workshops will consist of three parts: 1. short pitch presentations of the present participants,

2. bilateral dialogues between the participants focusing on shared visions and ideas, and 3. the formation of consortia after the presentation of the freshly developed project ideas in a final plenum. The final plenum will be recorded and videos of the project presentations will be uploaded to a specific KATANA Matchmaking group. Like this, potential collaborators that did not participate in a specific event can still commit to the presented project ideas by joining the respective consortia.

3.3.3 Training programme

KATANA will support all 1st stage beneficiaries in coming from an initial idea to a concrete business model.

During the Training programme, participants will get to know their customers and acquire all relevant knowledge for building a market ready product. To that goal various online and onsite training services will be provided. First of all, a comprehensive online webinar programme will be made available to beneficiaries covering topics like Business Model Generation, Agile Development, Customer Needs, and Intellectual Property Rights. These will be open to all beneficiaries and can be accessed online at any time.

Secondly, beneficiaries will be offered a customer focused business modelling training inspired by the Lean Start-up methodology: This training programme will last for eight (8) weeks with fixed, weekly online meetings. Participants will get some theoretical input for each of the online meetings and some homework to do afterwards. Homework will particularly consist of interviews with potential partners, customers and experts as it is considered key to test the actual market needs for a new business idea as early as possible.

During the online meetings, participants of the course will get the chance to ask questions and discuss on how to adapt the initial business model with the KATANA experts. Topics that will be covered during the curriculum are, amongst others: (i) Value Proposition Design, (ii) Definition of Customer Segments & Relationships, (iii) Choice of Marketing & Distribution Channels, and (v) Different Revenue Models.

3.3.4 On-site bootcamp

As a culmination of the KATANA support services for 1st stage beneficiaries, a three (3) day onsite bootcamp will bring together all beneficiaries in Germany. The aim of the bootcamp is to strengthen cross-border relationships and to provide targeted business training for the teams. With regard to the upcoming reward crowdfunding process, special attention will be paid to topics such as online-marketing and communication as well as to the preparation of 2nd stage applications.

The 3-day bootcamp concept will be as follows

Day 1: Connect & Play

The aim of the first day will be to connect the teams and to support exchange and relationships between the clusters. Therefore, day one (1) will include an initial get together and focus on the aspect of networking.

Starting with so-called innovation talks, participants will quickly get to know their peers. During the format, two (2) randomly chosen teams will get on stage and present themselves and their idea in a one (1) minute pitch. In the following two (2) minutes, they will identify synergies between the two teams as well as potential joint projects. Besides, participants will get a proper introduction on how to apply for 2nd stage and will get the chance to ask all questions concerning the application procedure at the KATANA help desk.

Day 2: Learn & Prepare

The focus of day two (2) will be the fine-tuning of ideas. In addition to the general networking of teams in specific networking areas, participants will be offered workshops in various entrepreneurship methodologies. Amongst others, sessions will cover topics such as:

• Team Building

• Blue Ocean Strategy

• Design Thinking

• Effectuation

• etc.

Also, dedicated business coaches and KATANA consortium members will be available for 1:1 coaching sessions in order to review the teams’ business models and assist them in the preparation of investor pitches.

Day 3: Pitch & Develop

Just as day two (2), day three (3) will allow the teams to work on their projects with the support of the present coaches. Besides, the main programme will consist of specific workshops.

With regard to the reward crowdfunding process as part of the 2nd stage application, workshops on day three (3) will cover topics such as:

• IP Rights

• Legal aspects of founding a start-up

• Marketing & Communication

• Investor Negotiations & Funding

• etc.

The highlight of the onsite bootcamp will be three (3) minutes pitch presentations held in front of external stakeholders.

3.4 Open Call 1 Submission and Evaluation process

3.4.1 Open Call 1 publication

KATANA Open Call 1 – Call for Teams will be launched on December 1st 2016 and will be supported by:

• Call Fiche, which provides the scope and objectives of the Open Call 1.

• Guide for Applicants, this document.

• Declaration of Honour on exclusion criteria and absence of conflict of interest.

Please download the relevant files and read them carefully before you submit your pitch video. The submission deadline is 28 February 2017 at 17:00 CET (Central European Time).

3.4.2 Applicants registration

Interested applicants should register at KATANA.eval - http://katanaproject.eu/evaluation - a software platform intended to enable pitches submission and evaluation performed by the teams/applicants. The platform will be the entry point for all pitch videos in the Open Call 1.

3.4.3 Pitch preparation

All applicants should prepare a short pitch video with duration of max 2 minutes. For Open Call 1 it is not requested to apply with a concrete idea fitting to one of the three main topics, the applicants rather have to present their skills, competences, their understanding of the dynamics across the agrifood value chain and their vision of the sector. The more concrete these pitches become, the easier will it be for the fellow applicants to evaluate the entity. Concrete ideas will emerge as a result of collaboration and the consortia building prior to Open Call 2.

3.4.4 Evaluation criteria and process

KATANA proposes an innovative and agile evaluation method for its Open Call 1 that is tailor-made to the needs of SMEs. The method has already been successfully applied, was upgraded for the purpose of KATANA and holds potential to roll out in future EC Calls with similar requirements. KATANA brings the platform-based evaluation system for its Open Call 1 that includes Peer-to-Peer (p2p) evaluation, where applicants evaluate other teams and their pitches. The novelty of this system is that the Applicant and the Evaluator roles are shared by the same set of people. Namely, the Applicants are at the same time Evaluators for other applications at the same call. The ranking algorithm takes into account not only the evaluations received by the others, but the competence in evaluating other applicants as well, because it is not only the application, but much more the competencies of the applicants that guarantee future success on the market. This will allow KATANA to offer its 1st stage supporting services to the most promising teams that market players themselves find as ones with the most potential for future commercialisation. Important notice 3: Within the peer-to-peer evaluation method, there is a specific mechanism in the algorithm that prevents skewed evaluation. Applicants will rank other applicants by being presented two of them. They will have to state which of the two they find better, but they will not give marks that could results in skewed results. Additionally, applicants will be evaluated on the quality of their ranking in relation to other applicants. According to that, if they try to skew the evaluation by ranking good proposals worse than bad ones, they will be downgraded by the algorithm automatically.

This evaluation methodology is based on the platforms and algorithms that have proved as very reliable, bias-free and agile tools for the evaluation of applications submitted by SMEs at open calls. The algorithm used has an objective to form a ranking according to different criteria in two consecutive rounds. In order to suppress deliberate distortions in the evaluation process intended to boost one's own application, two rankings are produced: one of the applications and the other of the applicants/evaluators and their expertise. The final ranking is a linear combination of the two.

In the case of KATANA, the evaluation of pitches will be based upon three concrete criteria. All of them will be weighted as follows:

Nr. Criterion Weight

1 Previous experience and current activities 30%

2 Understanding of the dynamics across the value chain 32.5%

3 Vision for new products/services 37.5%

Within the first round, each self-evaluator (SE) is given at first to compare two other applications

(preferably not from his/her country), randomly chosen. Each SE compares the allocated applications according to the three criteria by which two or three proposals can be compared. The process is repeated in several sub-rounds. The number of evaluation comparisons required by each team depends on the number of applications, but is not expected to exceed 100 in the worst case. Consider that the required time for one evaluation to be made is not more than 10 minutes per pitch, so that the total time allotted to the evaluation procedure at this stage should not exceed 17 hours in total dispersed through one month, which means that average time dedicated to evaluation will not exceed half an hour per day.

Important notice 4: The Applicants to KATANA project understand that their applications processes will include evaluating of other applications competing for the same funding. To provide the evaluations, the applicants agree to receive other applicants' video presentations, to watch them carefully, and to submit their feedback according to the instructions that will be provided by KATANA project management team.

Applicants also understand that failing to provide their evaluations of other applications within the deadline set by the project management team, will automatically exclude their application from the KATANA project. The evaluation process will start on March 01, lasting for 30 days, while the amount of evaluations expected to be performed by the applicants will depend on total amount of applications received in the project.

3.4.5 Award criteria for Open Call 1

Award criteria will be based on the ranking list as result of the p2p community evaluation.

Public link:   Only for registered users