SME Funding

The path to structured R&D activities

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play a central role in Austria's economy. In order to facilitate the entry into a continuous research and development activity and to raise the quality of the research projects, the FFG bundles coordinated SME subsidies. For SMEs, appropriate funding is available for each phase (parallel funding excluded). With the various subsidy models and non-repayable grants from 6.000 EUR (eg Projekt.Start), grants from 10.000 EUR (eg Innovation Voucher, Patent.Voucher) to max. 90.000 EUR (eg Small Scale Project), the FFG makes it easier for SMEs to get into research and development. The core objective of the SME funding is a subsequent, concrete research and development project in the company (eg General Programme and Small Scale Project). SME Hotline: 05 7755-5000.

Give your innovation idea increased chances in planning and implementation an kick-off. Speed up your market transition with FFG's bottom-up funding. There are options for every phase of your research and development activities. Often, a combination of customized funding offers is useful to implement innovative and competitive activities or problem solutions.

In the bottom-up funding approach is the funding of research and development projects of companies without restriction to specific topics and technology fields. The project goal is a functioning product, process or service. Exploitation and potential market prospects play an important role in the funding decision.

For example: Choose Projekt.Start to prepare for the application for a General Programme-project and then optionally use a Markt.Start loan as a SE-startup to transition your products or services to the market (look up figure below). The Small Scale-project is designed for smaller project volumes and with Frontrunner, Microelectronics2Market and Life Sciences the focus is on climate and environmental protection and digitalization in healthcare, medical devices to drug development. Impact Innovation promotes the use of innovation methods to solve an (unsolved) problem.

The essentials in brief

Program Owner / Sponsor
Topic	Bottom-up, Circular Economy, Climate-Neutral City, Digitalisation & Broadband, Energy Transition, Further research areas, Innovative & Competitive Companies, Life Sciences & Health, Mobility Transition, People, Qualification & Gender, Production & Materials, Quantum: Research & Technology, Society & Security, Space & Aviation, Wood: Research & Knowledge Transfer
Project type	Projektvorbereitung Innovationsscheck Patent.Scheck Kleinprojekt Unternehmensprojekte - Experimentelle Entwicklung Unternehmensprojekt Industrielle Forschung Prozess- und Organisationsinnovationen Collective Research Markteinführungsprojekt
Financing	National
Target group	SME, companies in formation, founders, startups
Selection by	Evaluations are conducted by internal experts of the FFG.
What is being funded	Information on the eligible costs is available in the several guidelines and in the current version of the FFG Cost Guide.
Min. / max. funding	0 / 3000000
Min. / max. running time	0 - 36 months
Availability from	01.01.2015 - constantly