KATANA is one out of five European INNOSUP-1-2015 – Cluster facilitated projects for new value chains projects (funded under EC Call for proposal: H2020-INNOSUP-2015-1). The project started on 1st of July 2016 and will distribute in total 1.2 million euros to European start-ups and SMEs and empower acceleration of new cutting edge tech in agribusiness. 14 partners from 8 European countries (led by bwcon GmbH from Germany) teamed up to value innovative ideas of start-ups and SMEs and introduces easy-to-join procedures to market trendsetters. KATANA supports European SMEs and start-ups in the agrifood value chain to access knowledge, technology, capital and markets in order to respond to the global competitive environment. KATANA provides this access by leveraging the multiplier potential of cross-border/cross-sectoral collaboration, and with its systemic approach, which homogenizes services towards the overall aim to place new products/ services in the market. TECHNOLOGY: KATANA provides 3 technology platforms: Marketplace for Precision Agriculture Services; Platform for exploiting IoT to reach consumers and Toolbox for the design of functional foods (recipes and processes). These technological enablers are open collaboration spaces and they empower start-ups and SMEs to co-create and test services but also to jointly develop novel business models across the value chain. In the course of KATANA use of platforms is totally free of charge for all KATANA beneficiaries. Benefit from the flexibility of these platforms and grasp unlimited possibilities their open and modular design provides! GET FUNDED: KATANA is a perfect opportunity for start-ups and SMEs coming from agrifood value chain, ICT sector and emerging industries to team up with other partners from other sector and/or other countries and opt for the rich portfolio of services and direct funding KATANA team offers. Starting from the first Open Call we will publish later this year (stay tuned on our social media channels and visit our website regularly), start-ups and SMEs (even teams of individuals in this first phase) will be given the opportunity to present who they are and how the think (in a format of 2-minutes video pitch) and participate in community-driven peer-to-peer evaluation that will bring the best 100 European teams (who will be financially supported with 2K Eur each for traveling, finding partners for the next phase and attending our bootcamp in Stuttgart) who enter the next phase and form consortia that prepare reward crowdfunding campaigns (that is actually KATANA second Open Call). The best 10 SME consortia in respect to their reward crowdfunding performance win additional 100K Eur of direct funding each from KATANA