The first Altfinator national workshop organized by PEDAL Consulting was held in the premises of Slovak Centre of Scientific and Technical Information in Bratislava, Slovakia, on September 25.

The traditional and alternative financial instruments for innovative companies were presented, together with some Slovak and European success stories and lessons learned from the implementation of these instruments. The participants also discussed the “measures” to be put in place and the improvements to be made in order to better meet the needs of the country in the field of financing innovation.

The Altfinator consortium was represented by Robert Miskuf, CEO of PEDAL Consulting who delivered speech and moderated discussion. Around 30 attendees of the workshop learnt not only about the Altfinator project, but also about real life potential of alternative financing both from the perspective of innovative SMEs and investors.

For more information please contact r.miskuf@pedal-consulting.eu

When – 14th November, 2018

Location – Hotel Park Inn by Radisson Danube Bratislava

Duration – 1 day

PEDAL Consulting will present the preliminary findings of the Altfinator project during the upcoming Fin.Techsummit in Bratislava.

The event will welcome renowned guests from Slovakia, Central Europe as well as other European Union member states, who will discuss recent challenges related to implementation of artificial intelligence in banking sector and financial market, behavioural aspects of providing financial services as well as regulation of environment affected by automation and disruptive elements and actors.

Moreover, representatives of start-up companies will have greater space for presentations of their unique business plans and new opportunities to gather support for their projects.

The conference will gather representatives from public sector, business, start-ups, innovators and visionaries as well as everyone who is interested to actively participate in creating new solutions and attractive and functional financial ecosystem.

The programme will include the following sessions:

ROBOTISATION OF THE FINANCIAL SECTORFINTECH AND OUR BEHAVIOUR ON THE FINANCIAL MARKET BLOCKCHAIN TRENDS
FINTECH VS. TRADITIONAL ACTORS – HOW TO CREATE
A HEALTHY ENVIRONMENT
ROLE OF FINTECHS IN RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
OUTSOURCING VS. INTERNAL RESEARCH
SANDBOX’ – TESTING PLATFORM FOR FINTECHS

For more information, please visit: http://fintechsummit.sk/2018/?lang=en

PEDAL Consulting is a partner in the Altfinator project.

Tenderio organises the last edition of a series of 5 webinars! Taking place tomorrow the 25th of September, 2018.

The webinar is organised by project partner LOBA and will be hosted by Tenderio partner IPL. It will focus on “Evaluation and Contracting”.

Moreover, for this final webinar Tenderio is proud to announce a double collaboration with IAPMEI and Nir-Vana project.

See the Agenda below:

Welcome and introduction to tendering abroad – a whole world of opportunities – Alexandre Almeida, moderator and Tenderio partner from LOBA (5 mins)
How Tenderio works – how Tenderio can help you win business abroad and how to get involved – Robert Miskuf, Tenderio founder and partner from Pedal Consultants (10 mins)
How to win tenders in Portugal? Insights and tips from LOBA success stories – Helder Amaral, Tenderio partner from LOBA (10 mins)
SME internationalisation in Portugal – the support of IAPMEI/ EEN-PORTUGAL (5 mins) – Vanda Marg. J. Santos Narciso, IAPMEI (5 mins)
Public procurement of innovation – Victor Torres Pedrosa, partner of Nir-Vana project (5 mins)
Q&A session. Live questions to the speakers from delegates. (5 mins)
Wrap-up and details of future webinars in the series – Alexandre Almeida, moderator and Tenderio partner from LOBA (5 mins)
For registrations: http://www.workcast.com/register?cpak=2758761799687086

For more information contact us at info@tenderio.com

PEDAL is the Coordinator of the Tenderio Project.

The main objective of the BIOWAYS project is to promote the huge potential of bio-based research results and raise public awareness of bio-based products. We use a variety of communication techniques, public engagement activities and the development of games, educational tools and fun facts to do this and we have been present at major events all over Europe for the past two years.

Now BIOWAYS is teaming up the New Scientist, one of the world’s most respected science publications, to be part of the New Scientist Live event, which takes place in London from September 20-23, when will have a dedicated stand at the event. New Scientist Live is one of Europe’s most exciting science shows, attracting thousands of visitors and some of the world’s most renowned scientists, researchers and industry leaders. With immersive experiences, insightful talks, world-acclaimed speakers and interactive exhibits, the show quite literally bring science to life.

BIOWAYS people, as well as researchers from other projects and industry experts, will be at the BIOWAYS stand to engage with the New Scientist Live audience, helping to increase their awareness of the bioeconomy with hands-on displays of bio-based products and the materials used to make them, and demonstrations of innovative bio-processes. Our stand will be exciting and interactive giving all our visitors the chance to see and feel (and sometimes smell) the many different bio-products that exist and talk to researchers and companies about what’s out there on the market and what’s coming soon.

We will have a large array of bio-products on display, ranging from everyday items such as bags, coffee cups, shoes and clothing and we will even be demonstrating how paper can be made from poo.
Visitors will also have the chance to play the fun games developed by BIOWAYS that lead players on adventures while at the same time teaching them some amazing facts and figures about the bioeconomy. We’ll be totting up the scores over the four days of the event and there will be bio-prizes for the winners.

As well as learning through games and hands-on displays, visitors will also be able to learn more about the bioeconomy through our striking displays, posters and factsheets, which will also be on the stand.

Finally, we will be asking all our visitors to become part of BioWatch, our exciting online community, which provides lots of amazing facts and figures all about the latest research and the latest products in the bioeconomy. As one of the main outputs of the project, we are hoping that the excitement of New Scientist Live will inspire everyone to get involved in BioWatch and stay in touch with the exciting developments European researchers are making in this important sector every day.

PEDAL Consulting is a partner in the Bioways project.

PEDAL Consulting expands its portfolio of international projects through a newly awarded EUR 100K contract secured from the International Investment Bank.

The main objective is to provide consulting services for PeWaS s.r.o. in regard to the verification of its innovative AquaholderⓇ  products and their suitability for agricultural production in Vietnam.

The contracts consists of 4 key activities:

Preparation of the Project Feasibility Study.
Testing of AquaholderⓇ products in  real field conditions of Vietnam.
Elaboration of the Project Final Report.
Organization of an information seminar on the Project outcomes for Key Local Stakeholders.

The project is slated to start by the end of September 2018 and has a duration of 12 months.

For more information, please contact r.miskuf@pedal-consulting.eu

The 8th edition of IFIB – International Forum on Industrial Biotechnology and Bioeconomy organized by Assobiotec, the Italian Association for the development of biotechnology which is part of the national Federation of Chemical Industry (Federchimica), will take place on 27th – 28th September 2018 in Turin and will be structured with a conference, partnering event and poster session.

The focus of the Forum is biotechnology, as provider of new resources for industries. It will be organized into round tables and sessions devoted to specific sub-sectors of industrial biotechnology: bio-based industries, agro-food, energy, environment policies on industrial biotech and bioeconomy, involving international speakers coming from key sector’s players.

BIOWAYS and BIOVOICES projects are the official sponsors of IFIB2018.
BIOWAYS and BIOBRIDGES projects will be represented on the 26th of September by Susanna Albertini (FVA) during the conference “Education as a main pillar of the EU Bioeconomy Strategy” with an intervention entitled “Education and communication: the bioeconomy perception in EU”.

BIOVOICES project will participate with an interactive activity to validate the challenges that will be addressed during the Mobilization and Mutual Learning Workshops, involving Quadruple Helix stakeholders to boost bioeconomy and Bio-Based products market uptake.

The IFIB participants will be requested to contribute suggesting the key questions they believe are relevant to address the identified challenges, interacting with posters displayed for the entire duration of the event in a dedicated space.

More information HERE

PEDAL is a partner in both the Bioways and Biovoices projects.

In accordance with the Public Procurement Development Strategy of the Republic of Serbia for the period 2014-2018, strategic objectives of public procurement reform are as follows:

To reduce irregularities in the public procurement system;
To strengthen competition in the public procurement market;
To increase cost-effectiveness and efficiency of public procurements;
To promote and encourage the environmental and social aspects as well as participation of small and medium-sized enterprises and innovation in public procurements;
To fully harmonize Serbian legislation with the EU acquis in the field of public procurements and to fully implement it in practice.
This Strategy covers the priority areas such as improving the regulatory framework; strengthening the institutional framework; increasing the efficiency and sustainability of the public procurement system as well as eliminating irregularities in the public procurement system.
Activities in the process of harmonisation with acquis communautaire will be focused on specific issues concerning:

e-procurement;
defining and regulating of public procurement procedures in compliance with the provisions of the relevant Directives;
public procurement in the fields of water management, energy, transport and postal services;
public procurement in the field of defence and security,
In 2017, the Law on Public Procurement should be revised and modernised in order to ensure full harmonisation with acquis communautaire.

Click here to get in touch with the Tenderio team and find out how we can help your business grow and stay ahead of the tendering game.

If you’d like to start benefitting from the various business services Tenderio has to offer, click here to register free of charge.

PEDAL Consulting is the coordinator of the Tenderio Project.

PEDAL Consulting will be hosting the First National Workshop for the Altfinator Project on the 25th of September, 2018 in Bratislava, Slovakia. Find the details here below;

Location: Crowne Plaza Bratislava, Bratislava, Slovakia

Duration: 13:00 – 16:15

The objective for this event is to present the traditional financial instruments (debt & equity), the alternative financial instruments (loan and investment crowdfunding) for innovative companies as well as French and Slovak success stories/experiences from implementation of these instruments and to discuss the “measures” to be put in place and the improvements to be made in order to better meet the needs of the country in the field of financing innovation.

The workshop is dedicated to financial intermediaries (banks, financial institutions, business angels and investors) and business multipliers (public or private associations, incubators and agencies).

Have a look at the program HERE.

The Alternative Financing Validation Group Co-creation Workshop will be organised on 26 September 2018 in Bratislava, Slovakia in the framework of the Altfinator project (www.altfinator.eu) funded by the European Commission.

Location: Bratislava, UNIQ – Staromestská 3, Crowdberry.
Duration: 1 day

Hosted by Crowdberry, the workshop provides breakthrough opportunity to contribute to the long-term transformation of the European alternative finance ecosystem and achieve a significant impact in improving the access of SMEs on alternative financing in Europe.

Altfinator is currently the most active project in Europe to promote alternative financial instruments. The project consortium consists of 11 partners, specialised in SME development and alternative financing. The consortium developed the project strategy. In order to ensure, that the strategy is impactful and highly efficient, the workshop will be used to collect the feedback from high level expert and include their invaluable contribution in the final concept to be implemented in the next two years.

In case you are interested to participate, please contact r.miskuf@pedal-consulting.eu

PEDAL Consulting partners in the Altfinator Project

This year, the ministry opened the Center for Financial Innovation, which aims to bring together the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS), financial institutions and other entrepreneurs with the ministry to discuss innovative practices penetrating the financial market. One of them is crowdfunding, an alternative form of financing that is not yet regulated in Slovakia.

The Center for Financial Innovation (CFI) was established by the Ministry of Finance of the Slovak Republic in February 2018. The main objective of the CFI is to create a platform for regular exchange of information and experience for the relevant state administration bodies, market participants and interest groups. CFI’s priority activity is to map the environment influencing the introduction of new technologies in the financial market, identify deficiencies or opportunities to improve the environment, and actively remove barriers to the emergence and operation of the FinTech companies in Slovakia.

In recent years, interesting alternative forms of financing such as crowdlending and crowdfunding have emerged to provide the underserved European SME market with debt and equity financing. However, these alternative solutions have been hampered by a missing link in their distribution: SME advisors.

This missing link partly explains why Southern, Central and Easter European regions are lagging behind Northern and Western European regions in terms of alternative finance. In those countries SME entrepreneurs still rely on traditional in-person advisors to help them source the funding they need for their business. While these advisors have ties with the traditional financial ecosystem, they often have little or no knowledge of alternative finance solutions and the firms which provide them.

The Altfinator project was set up to correct this. Its goal is to provide SME advisors with information and training by transferring the best practices from more advanced markets such as the US, the UK and the Netherlands to less advanced markets in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. Initially, the project focuses on 8 countries: Portugal, Spain, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine.

The information dissemination and education efforts target the entire support system of innovative SMEs which includes start-up networks, business accelerators, traditional SME advisors, such as accountants, financial intermediaries, traditional financial institutions, as well as policy makers. The goal is to train and educate approximatively 5.000 of these SME advisors in the first 2 years

The project is conducted by an international team of 11 partners, consultancies and academic institutions with in-depth knowledge of alternative finance. These are: Civitta, a large international consultancy from Estonia with a presence in the Baltic Countries, Central & Eastern Europe, and the UK (project lead), CrowdfundingHub from the Netherlands, Zabala Innovation Consulting from Belgium, Innomine Group from Hungary, Mediapark from Lithuania, University of Manchester from the UK, Politecnico di Milano from Italy, Loba from Portugal, Docomo Digital from the UK/Japan, Pedal Consulting from Slovakia, and ECWT from Norway.

“Our research showed that traditional and new SME advisors were a bottleneck for crowdfunding. They lacked knowledge and experience of alternative finance…The Altfinator project is a good way to make sure that SME advisors and platforms better find each other and help provide more funding to SMEs,” said Ronald Kleverlaaan, Managing Director, CrowdfundingHub

The European Commission is providing Altfinator with 1.5 million euros in co-financing for the first two years as part of the European Horizon 2020 program.
Most recently, the team met with its Advisory Board and presented its project to European start-ups and Alternative Finance experts at the Bratislava TechSummit, the largest CEE technology-innovative conference.
After the initial phase, the training will be expanded further through national and local organizations in other countries.

PEDAL is a partner in the Altfinator project.