What nobody tells you about how to get an Enisa: What is the maximum amount you can request from Enisa?

What is the maximum amount that can be requested from Enisa?

As always, this question has several answers. First, the maximum nominal amount to request depends on the line of loans to which you present your company.

‍

Nominally, the Growth, Digital Entrepreneurs, Agroinnpulse and Audiovisual and Creative Cultural Industries lines include a maximum amount of one and a half million euros; the Entrepreneurs line a maximum of three hundred thousand euros and the Young Entrepreneurs line a maximum of seventy-five thousand euros.

‍

That said, it is very important to keep in mind that the effective amount that ENISA can approve for a company can never exceed the amount of the company's own funds at the time of approval.

‍

But... what are own funds? They are composed of:

• The initial capital provided by the partners and the capital increases that are made.
• The unrequired capital formed by outstanding disbursements.
• Emission premiums.
• Reservations, legal or voluntary
• Own shares and shares in assets.
• The result of previous years (which in early-stage technological startups are usually negative and therefore subtracted).
• Other contributions from partners (which if they are in the format of a convertible loan Enisa will require that they be converted to equity before disbursing their loan), and
• The result of the current exercise.

An important note is that equity is part of Net Worth, which can also include adjustments for changes in value in certain assets, grants, donations and legacies, among other concepts. This means that it includes concepts or quantities that come from third parties.

‍

Having understood the above, the first issue to consider is that in order to apply for a loan of more than three hundred thousand euros, the company must audit its accounts and this audit is a substantial part of the loan evaluation process, so that, if it has significant caveats, it will raise a clear alarm signal in the agency.

‍

Secondly, ENISA provides co-investment loans, so the fact that there is a round of capital increase in conjunction with the approval of the loan is a requirement for approval of the loan. As we said before, ENISA will not grant a loan that exceeds the amount of the company's own funds at the time of approval, which implies that the maximum amount to be requested will be determined by the interaction between these two variables. For example, if the company has negative own funds of fifty thousand euros and the round is two hundred thousand euros, the maximum amount that the agency will approve will be one hundred and fifty thousand euros.

‍

Finally, ENISA subtracts from the maximum amount that the company can request, the amount of any outstanding loan that the startup may have from a previous approval. Thus, if the company aspires to apply for a loan from the Growth line in the amount of three hundred thousand euros and has positive own funds and a capital increase round of five hundred thousand euros, not audited, and has an outstanding balance of one hundred thousand euros from a previous loan, the maximum that ENISA will approve is two hundred thousand euros.