In the opinion of Minister of State Zoltán Cséfalvay, establishing an adequate environment for start-up innovations requires – in addition to investment – new types of tenders and institutions. The Minister of State pointed out at a conference organized by economic daily Napi Gazdaság in Budapest that, as far as RDI is concerned, it is not helpful to have a centralized funding system and large-scale centralized tenders.

He stressed that the start-up support system shall be constructed of smaller units and he added that to this end that Government has made several steps last year. As an example he singled out the assistance for launching joint research projects with the participation of universities and large enterprises, the progress made regarding the venture capital programme and the formation of the BudapestHUB working group. He nonetheless added that there is lot of work to do before Budapest can become the start-up centre of Central and Eastern Europe.

The Minister of State reiterated that in the period 2014-2020 the EU funding available for establishing the start-up eco-system will total HUF 140bn.

Zoltán Cséfalvay called it much fortunate that as of 1 January the National Development Agency was shut down and thus – without this institution – plans can be realized in a faster and more flexible way.

As he explained, the Government identified four fields of start-up support. The “gazelle programme” was launched last year and the Government also aims to bolster relations between large enterprises and start-ups. One partnership option can be the opening of a research facility or laboratory of a large enterprise for a start-up. The Minister of State stressed that the formulation of the spin-off scholarship system, which subsidizes spin-off companies that aim to generate profits from university research products, is at an advanced stage. The incubator scheme, which endeavours to help domestic start-ups join the large technology incubators all over the world, has also been almost completed, he added.

According to the presentation of Zoltán Cséfalvay, he has recently held talks in Boston about how Hungarian early-stage enterprises can participate at MassChallenge, the largest start-up competition of the world. He announced that application to this year’s MassChallenge can be submitted from Hungary until 2 April 2014. The event has on average 1300 participants and prizes total some USD 1 million. He stressed that in order to help get prepared for the 2015 competition a start-up event will be held in September-November in Budapest, of which the top ten companies can advance to Boston. The Minister of State revealed as a future plan of the Government to establish in Budapest one of the regional centres of MassChallenge after 2015.

(Ministry for National Economy)