Co-Investment Grants Program
Overview:
The Co-Investment Grants Program aims to help stimulate private investment by early-stage private investors, including syndication between investors and encouraging first-time angel investors.
The Co-Investment (CI) grants will provide additional funding beyond what investors are willing to invest to help early-stage firms develop and grow. The grants will help by better capitalizing the enterprises, thereby providing a longer ‘runway’ to achieve business development milestones that improve the odds of success and lead to stronger businesses. In addition, CI funding could encourage investors to spread capital across more investments (portfolio strategy), thereby leading to more firms receiving the benefits of angel and other investors as partners.
Target beneficiaries:
IPSD II’s Co-Investment Grants program will be working with innovative, technology-driven, technology-enabled, and high growth startups as well as innovative SMEs across a range of sectors except of industrial or manufacturing (in accordance with the project’s Environmental and Social Management Manual guidelines) from all over West Bank and Gaza. Women owned/ led businesses are encouraged to apply.
Financing:
The Co-Investment Grants program will provide grants as a match to private investment up to (i) a maximum 50% of the total amount of funding rounds up to $300k, with a maximum grant size of $100K, or (ii) a maximum of 33% of the total amount of funding rounds exceeding $300k, with a maximum grant size of $350K. The maximum amount of Co-Investment Grants that can be awarded for one company is $350k cumulatively under IPSD I and IPSD II.
Eligibility Criteria:
The Co-Investment Grants are designed to assist firms in capital raising efforts and are intended to attract private investors. As such, while the funding will go directly to the Beneficiary firm, both the firm and investors must meet established eligibility and selection criteria.
Each firm applying for a Co-Investment Grant must meet the following eligibility criteria:
- Be a company operating in the West Bank and Gaza, that is legally registered or in the process of legal registration or committed to register with the Ministry of National Economy before grant agreement signature.
- Be operational for at least 6 months prior to applying to the program.
- Firm’s activities shall have moderate to low or minimal environmental impacts.
- The beneficiary firm must commit to spending at least 70% of CI grant funds in West Bank and Gaza and any funds spent outside West Bank and Gaza must be spent on expenses directly related to driving the company’s growth.
Note 1: A firm already benefiting/benefited from a CI Grant (if they have not received the full award ceiling of $350K) can apply for an additional grant (if eligible) only if the round for which they are applying for matching has a new lead investor.
Note 2: A Firm can apply for a CI grant for the first time with an existing investor as lead investor, if such investor has not invested more than $50,000 into this startup.
Note 3: IPSD II will consider applications from companies that raised investment rounds during the period of March 2023 – December 2024 when IPSD was between programs and CI Grants were unavailable, provided the investment and investor meet eligibility and selection requirements and a strong co-investment case is presented.
Note 4: The grant agreement will be signed only after the start-ups, including foreign start-ups, register with MONE and open a tax file. The CI grant will have a window of technical assistance to support grant recipients to comply with project prerequisites (if needed) before grant signature, such as E&S measures, fulfil company registration with MoNE and tax file opening at the MoF.
A minimum of $50,000 private investment is required to qualify for a Co-Investment Grant. The private investment must be structured as equity or quasi-equity (e.g. convertible notes).
For detailed information on the eligibility and selection criteria, please refer to the overview document: Co-Investment Grants Program Overview
You can also find answers to frequently asked questions here: FAQ Document.
Application Deadline: Applications are assessed on a rolling basis subject to funds availability.