Telenet : New imec.istart call with special offers for the Media, Telecom and Entertainment industries

Wednesday, January 11, 2017 - Committed to continuously improve and strengthen its offering for tech entrepreneurs, imec opened its first imec.istart call of 2017 with a new special incubation track, focusing on start-ups active in the media, telecom and entertainment sectors. The initiative is a collaboration between imec, Barco, Mediahuis, Medialaan and Telenet as investing partners, together with VRT Sandbox and MediaNet Vlaanderen as supporting partners. This is the third special track of imec.istart, after the launch of the Blue Health and the Logistics & Mobility verticals in 2015.

Sven De Cleyn, imec.istart Program Manager, highlights the importance of introducing specialized tracks in the imec.istart program: 'Nowadays there is a wide variety of incubators in Belgium to support local entrepreneurship. We must continue to reinvent ourselves and our offer to make sure we keep on representing an added value to every start-up that joins our program. These special business tracks ensure that our entrepreneurs get the best coaching and mentoring they can get, by putting them in direct contact with industry experts who are interested in their idea and will guide them in the right directions to make sure they turn them into successful businesses.'

The special tracks represent an additional support for the start-ups active in these market segments. This includes an extra funding of 50.000 Euro, specialized coaching in the fields where each partner is active in and exclusive access to their networks, expert knowledge and available technologies.

Start-ups who wish to apply for the tracks will need to additionally pitch their idea to a special jury, consisting of representatives of each investing partner, on top of the general imec.istart jury. Being selected in the general imec.istart call is mandatory to join the tracks. However, start-ups that are not accepted in the verticals can still join the program and receive full support from imec.istart incubation team.

Dieter Nieuwdorp, Senior VP Strategy and Corporate Development Telenet: 'Through our Telenet Kickstart program, we want to help digital entrepreneurs and start-ups to accelerate and grow their business. As an investing partner in the new imec.start vertical, we are looking forward to share our extensive domain expertise in the areas of media, telecom and entertainment and to open up our broad business network to promising start-up teams'

Imec.istart's first call of 2017 runs from January 1 until February 1. Get to know the procedures and submit your application to join the over 120 companies in our portfolio.

In 2015, the imec.istart was awarded by UBI Global with a fourth place in the category 'Top University Business Accelerators', a benchmark in which more than 500 incubation programs from all over the world were screened.

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