The Skolkovo Business Angels Club marked its first anniversary this week by announcing three deals with resident startups
The SBAC is an initiative by the Skolkovo Foundation to match investors with promising startups. The SBAC, founded a year ago, brings the two together in regular pitch events at the Hypercube outside Moscow.
The latest club meeting, held this week and featuring a total of nine pitches, appears to have been the most successful to date.
Panorics CEO Alexei Bochkarev, left, shaking hands with venture club founder Alexander Borodich. Photo: sk.ru
“I don’t recall anything like this,” said Evgeny Taubkin, the director of Skolkovo’s Investment Service. “That investors at the event itself confirm their intentions to invest immediately.”
The biggest success of the night went to a resident of Skolkovo’s space cluster, Panorics.
The Moscow-based startup won the hearts of the jury of investors with 360-degree video recording technology, and right there on the stage signed a term sheet that secured $50,000 in financing.
“Today all the teams were very strong, so of course it’s great to win,” said Alexei Bochkarev, the CEO and founder of Panorics.
“We view this investment as a big part of the next round of financing our project. This money will go toward creating a prototype machine that will record and stitch together panoramic video,” he added.
Two other IT projects received invitations to work with the business angels – GeoCV, a mobile app that creates 3D visuals of premeses, and cloud solutions project Goods4Cast, which optimizes stock storage.
Taubkin, meanwhile, praised the high turnout on the part of the business angels.
“It is our aim to attract new members to our club. At the anniversary meeting we had more than 80 new business angels. I hope they become active participants in our business angel community.”