Rasi Presents Model of Hybrid Financial Assistance for SMEs

Rasi Presents Model of Hybrid Financial Assistance for SMEs

Bratislava, August 20 (TASR) – Deputy Prime Minister for Investment and Informatisation Richard Rasi (Smer-SD) on Monday presented a hybrid financial assistance model for small and medium-sized companies, consisting in a combination of public and private resources that reduces dependence on state subsidies.

The aim is to help small and medium-sized companies that were launched as start-ups in asserting their innovative solutions on both the Slovak and foreign markets, said Rasi, adding that the co-financing entities were acquired thanks to former Slovak Ambassador to the USA Peter Kmec.

The Office of Deputy Prime Minister for Investment and Informatisation announced five calls in total that were joined by 16 firms. The firms were evaluated by an international commission.

Slovak firms Damalis and GoSpace, which succeeded in the calls, have undergone a three-month programme in the US accelerator ‘Smart City Works’ and have established themselves on the international market. According to Rasi, GoSpace has gained almost €115,000 and Damalis over €112,000 from the state budget. They’ve found additional investors in the USA and have thus managed to move from the local to the global market, said Rasi, adding that they want to continue with the model of hybrid financing.

Damalis succeeded in the call for digitising the public administration of a town with a solution called ‘Cviker’ (pince-nez). It created a visualisation of infrastructure projects using the technology of extended reality and implemented it in the town of Poprad (Presov region). The solution is now in a trial run. “During the stay in the USA we implemented our solution in a very short time with the biggest real estate developers in the eastern coast, which would have been impossible without our intensive work in the accelerator and without the assistance of foreign partners from Smart City Works,” said the company’s authorised representative Martin Rapos.

GoSpace gained a subsidy for resident parking in Slovak towns; it will implement pilot projects in cooperation with the town of Trnava and Bratislava’s borough of Karlova Ves. “We might make use of our technological advancement in the field of IoT (Internet of Things) and offer our solution to the portfolio of US telecommunication operators like T-Mobile US or Comcast,” said another company representative Ondrej Zavodsky.