Eleven Serbian companies received over EUR 800,000 from the EU on Friday as grants meant to turn their innovations into profit.

The companies applied for the funds following the first public invitation by the Innovation Fund in December last year, as part of an early development programme funded by the EU, Interim Managing Director of the Innovation Fund Ljiljana Kundakovic said, stressing that the companies are all small and newly formed.

Each selected project got up to EUR 80,000, which will finance as much as 85 percent of the total cost of the projects, Kundakovic stated at the ceremony where the recipients were announced.

She called on all the companies that were not selected in the first round, but also other companies, to enter their innovations, because the competition was still open.

The public invitation was answered by 58 companies from agriculture, energy, new materials, mechanical and IT industries.

The early development programme is funded through the Serbia Innovation Project, which in turn is a EUR 8.4 million project sponsored by the EU and conducted in coordination with the World Bank and Serbian Ministry of Education and Science.