Program

• The €50,000 grants are provided by ESA and Regione Piemonte.

• The recoverable grants provided by Compagnia di San Paolo will provide additional financial support to selected start-ups to cover the pre-seed phase in order to bridge the entrepreneurial projects towards investments by venture finance.

• Intesa Sanpaolo will offer a loan scheme to the start-ups. The due diligence process for the assessment of the start-ups that will request the loans will take into account also the technological evaluation conducted by ESA BIC Turin for the admission to the incubation program.

• Finpiemonte Partecipazioni SpA will provide capitals for the growth of the incubated companies using equity and quasi-equity instruments.

The business support activities involve:

• Analysis of competitive scenario and market

• Analysis of reference technologies

• Analysis of the profile of the founding team and of the skills necessary for the development of the company

• Mentoring activities through the network of professionals and entrepreneurs working in different sectors and technologies

• Design of the customer discovery and customer validation process and activities

• Support for the definition of the characteristics of a minimum viable product

• Support for the development and updating of the business plan and related business model

• Support for the definition of a multi-year economic and financial plan

• Support for the identification of partners for technological and market development

• Communication of the project idea and realization of pitch and investor deck

The technical support will be provided in different ways, such as:

• consultancy services to the start-ups provided by professors and researchers on specific topics.

• access to Politecnico di Torino and Links Foundation research infrastructures. A privileged channel for using research infrastructures and labs will be established for the start-ups that might have specific needs for developing and/or testing protypes in relevant environments.

• Ad-hoc development projects. Master or Phd theses, joint participation in competitive research and innovation calls.

IPR consulting will be provided by I3P and Politecnico di Torino. I3P will provide support in carrying out patent landscape analyses for freedome to operate, the assessment of innovation trends, the identification of critical patents and of potential licensee/licensors. Such activities will improve the start-up IP exploitation strategy. I3P will also support the start-ups in the interaction with selected patent attorneys and law firms specialized in IPR.

ESA BIC Turin will provide support for the forecasting of financial needs, assessment of alternative funding channels, preparation of pitch and investors deck, term sheet analysis, due diligence activities and consulting for the negotiation phase.

The current network of investors that cooperate with ESA BIC Turin includes:

• Primo Space

• Club degli Investitori

• LIFTT

• RedSeed

• NEVA Sgr

• RIF-T

• CDP Venture Capital

• Techstars

The network includes industrial associations (Piedmont Aerospace District and AMMA), large corporates (Leonardo, Thales Alenia Space Italia, Altec, Avio, Macaer) and innovative SMEs active in space technologies (Tyvak International, Teseo, APR, Argotec, D-Orbit, Ithaca, Nanoracks, Aiko).

The network of Italian research and innovation institutions include:

• Università degli studi di Torino

• Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT)

• CIRA Italian Aerospace Research Centre (Napoli)

• Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (PISA)

• Competence Centre for Manufacturing Industry 4.0 (CIM4.0)

• INRiM - Italian Institute for Metrology Research (Turin)

• INFN

• Bruno Kessler Foundation

We offer fully equipped offices and desks:

• Access available to the venue 24/7

• Fully equipped office, with high-speed internet connection, alarm system, video surveillance, air conditioning, cleaning

• Reception

• Mails’ and packages’ reception

• Meeting rooms

• Shared printer and copy machine

• Coffee break area

• Public and/or private IP addresses

• Access to Politecnico’s libraries

• Access to students’ and professors’ canteen of the Politecnico di Torino