Prizes, prizes, prizes

It’s not just millions of rubles and Skolkovo residency on offer for the winners of the Startup Village pitch sessions: Companies from IBM to Google and SAP are lining up to reward the top startups with investment, acceleration programs and entry into other competitions.

More than 350 startups will take part in the pitch sessions at Startup Village on June 2-3, the biggest innovations conference in Russia and Eastern Europe.

The top three startups will take home checks for 3 million, 2 million and 1 million rubles and reap the added benefits of the exposure that comes with victory.

But that’s not where the prizes end:

• Google will present a ‘top global startup’ award that will entitle the winner to an all-expenses-paid trip to one of the internet giant’s Google Campus entrepreneurial hubs.
• SAP has committed to a 500,000 ruble prize for the startup offering the most promising technology that falls within the German multinational software company’s scope of activities.
• I2BF Global Ventures, a US venture fund, is to dole out 500,000 rubles in investment to the top unmanned aerial vehicle project.
• Russian-American startup investor GVA LaunchGurus is offering the startup it considers the most promising a grant of $120,000 to go through its GVAccelerator program in September and October.
• Slush, which is considered Startup Village’s sister event in Finland, is funding a trip to Helsinki to take part in the tech conference in November for its favorite startup.
• IBM will supply $120,000 worth of cloud computing resources over the course of the next year  to the startup project at the company’s stand that appeals most to its mentors. The second-placed startup will receive $12,000 worth of cloud computing resources.

The pitch sessions will be held near the Skolkovo Technopark Office Center in six categories and several tracks within them. Many of the participant startups won entry to the Startup Village pitch sessions by virtue of winning the pitch competition at their leg of the Startup Tour, which visited 12 cities around Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus from February through April.

Those startups that emerge victorious at Startup Village will have been considered successful applicants for Skolkovo residency, a status that brings a multitude of benefits including zero percent profit tax, access to grants and investment, mentor support, discount office and laboratory space and more.