Fourteen innovative Moldovan business ideas in the digital or technological field have been selected for state funding. This was announced in a public event on 27 February 2023, as the results of a Call for Projects under the Support Programme for Digital Innovations and Technological Startups, which is managed by the Organization for the Development of Entrepreneurship (ODA). The chosen projects will be able to access non-refundable funding equivalent to around 25,000 euro. 

ODA launched the funding programme to support digital innovations and technological startups in November 2022, with the aim of promoting local competitiveness, innovations, the implementation of the digital economy, as well as green technologies and sustainable production. 

The winning projects came up with ideas such as creating a virtual market-place platform in the field of tourism, introducing innovative elements in the field of waste recycling, developing an application to monitor vital information of newborn babies, and developing a digital school of programming and logic, among others. 

The winners were congratulated by the Minister of Economic Development and Digitization, Dumitru Alaiba. The funding programme is implemented by ODA and supported by the Future Technologies Activity (FTA), funded by USAID and the Government of Sweden. It is the first funding programme in Moldova to use public funds dedicated to supporting the high-risk field of tech development and startups. 

The maximum amount of each grant offered to the winning projects is 500 thousand Moldovan leu (around 25,000 euro). In total, the winning ideas will benefit from 5.65 million leu (around 282,500 euro). Each of the companies implementing the projects will have to add their own contribution, representing 20% of the value of the investment. 

Further information

Read more about this story on the ODA website and find out more about the funding programme.