Pitch your company to the GEC

Your innovation is sustainable, circular and transformative?
You have a good chance to secure a GEC investment!

The Global Entrepreneurship Centre’s (GEC) mandate is to increase the number of successful start-ups that scale and reach commercial success. The GEC supports transformative companies that focus on Sustainable Technologies (SusTech) for achieving circularity, the global climate targets of the Paris Accord and the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. The GEC  supports and brings to the market the world’s best SusTech entrepreneurs through a unique 360° scale-up service and thus craft the economy of the future.

To identify innovation champions with transformative potential, the GEC will consider investment in time and services in the following activity sectors:
  • Agriculture and Nutrition
  • Building and Living
  • Textiles
  • Mobility
Your products and services will need to feature a
  • Material and/or product innovation,
  • Process and logistics innovation,
  • Recycling innovation,
  • Business model innovation.
If your company does not DIRECTLY provide innovative and sustainable solutions for the preceding sectors, you could still be considered for GEC funding, provided that your offering is a key enabler for those. Which enabling cross-industry technologies, services and business models do you provide? We also look at champions in:  
  • Sustainable Chemistry Energy Solutions
  • Materials Science Innovation
  • Robotics and Sensor Technologies
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Digital Twin
  • Logistics Innovation

Applications

The application is open for entrepreneurs from all continents. 

Selection Criteria

The GEC assessment covers the following criteria:
  • Innovation,
  • Team,
  • Business viability,
  • Market potential,
  • Partnerships,
  • Direct and indirect impact on the achievement of the global climate targets of the Paris Accord, on the Achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, on the Implementation of Circular Economy Concepts

Timeline

The investment committee looks at applications on a monthly basis. If your innovation falls in the scope of one of our Calls for Innovations or Awards, please submit it under the corresponding page on our website. If your innovation is not in the scope of one of our current programmes, we will store your submission and get back to you within 5 weeks. In addition we would contact you when we open a programme of relevance to your scope of activity (Agriculture and Nutrition, Building and Living, Textiles, or Mobility). Such Calls for Innovations are scheduled to run every 4 months.

Terms

The Investment consists of the GEC Scaling Factory, the GEC Catalyst Programme and the GEC Technology services. The terms are individual and based on an evaluation of the current scaling needs of your start-up.

Service Description (PDF)

Application Form

Note about the confidentiality of information that you submit: the Global Entrepreneurship Centre will treat your information with care for its own evaluation purposes. At this stage of the submission, no formal non-disclosure agreement (NDA) can be granted. Please therefore only share information that does not require any such NDA. In the further assessment phase, more detailed information may well be necessary to grant the award. Such information can then be subject to a specific contract.