Dubai's Annual Investment Meeting (AIM) Eurasia 2021, a partner to the Skolkovo Foundation and Roscongress, kicked off on March 2 in online format. Kirill Kaem, the Skolkovo Foundation’s Senior Vice President for Innovations and member of Roscongress, opened the startup session titled, “Accelerating the Startup Ecosystem in Eurasia During Turbulent Times.”
Mr. Kaem talked about the Skolkovo Foundation’s support measures for its startup community, and how it changed its strategy to adapt to the new situation, prioritizing certain technology developments that could be used to fight the pandemic while also supporting startups that suffered during the crisis. Also speaking during the session were Omar Christidis, the founder and CEO of Arabnet; Uranik Bego, the executive director of Innovation Center Kosovo; Olga Fleming, the founding partner at Oruga Investment Ltd.; and Dilshot Zufarov, the CEO of the Uzbekistan Venture Capital Association.
Kirill Kaem, Senior Vice President for Innovations at the Skolkovo Foundation. Screengrab: Sk.ru.
“The Skolkovo Foundation is the biggest supporting institution for startups and innovation in Russia,” said Mr. Kaem. “Today we are discussing the consequences of last year’s and this year’s situation with regards to the pandemic, how it has influenced startups’ problems, and what we should do to support different innovative ecosystems throughout the world. The Skolkovo Foundation has brought together over two thousand eight hundred startups from across Russia and abroad, they generate $1.5 billion a year, and we have a special program for international startups that want to develop their technologies and bring them to the Russian market.”
Mr. Kaem emphasized that 2020 was a major challenge for the Foundation and its startup companies, given that many struggled to come to terms with the new environment brought about by the pandemic. The crisis compelled the organization to seek ways to help the startup community, while also prioritizing companies developing technologies that could fight the spread of Covid-19.
“We have many different technologies concentrated in a few areas but which cover a broad spectrum, ranging from fintech to biomedical startups developing new drugs. By coincidence, some startups were already working in the field of contagious diseases and some were working on remote technologies like remote work and education. However, these projects were not undertaken with a situation like Covid-19 in mind. We had to rearrange our setup at the start of 2020 in order to support our startups, which Russia and the world need to fight Covid, and in this regard we see ourselves as a service organization.”
Even while Covid-19 disrupted Russia’s economy and other markets across the world, the Skolkovo Foundation continued to offer its services to the startup community in the form of grants, customs and tax benefits, as well as assistance in company creation, administrative and business operation.
“One of our important services is acceleration,” said Mr. Kaem. “We are a bridge connecting startups with industrial partners; that is to say, we find out industrial partners’ needs for our startups and that helps them develop the right products. In that sense, nothing has really changed since Covid, but we have shifted focus to seek out industry needs and the world’s in the context of this new situation.”
According to Mr. Kaem, the Foundation is prioritizing certain categories through its “Fast Track” program, and offering measures that target technologies related to medical and IT products.
“These are divided into three categories. The first category is classical biomedical needs; that is, disease prevention, diagnostics, and treatment. The second category is anything that involves protecting the population from the coronavirus – this could range from things such as disinfectant products to barrier protection. The third group of technologies encompasses anything that facilitates social distancing, such as remote education and remote work, reducing the number of people physically involved in technological and production processes. Those are the fields we support the most right now,” said Mr. Kaem.
While the Foundation has a regular grant program for the abovementioned categories, the organization's Fast Frack program is crucial for getting technologies from those areas into the fore. It allows a company to get through the expertise stage and receive grant money three times quicker than usual. Over thirty projects in the Skolkovo Foundation’s priority list received grants from a $1 million pool for solutions involving digitalization, automization, diagnostics solutions, and so on. Indeed, for some startups the pandemic presented an opportunity to advance their solutions. One such case was Webiomed, a high-accuracy machine learning diagnostics platform developed by K-Skay that helps doctors verify Covid-19 diagnosis.
“For some companies, the pandemic was a difficult time to survive, so we also supported companies that were not focused on Covid-related areas; for example, we reduced rent payments and gave more time for projects using our grant money. Undoubtedly, for some companies it meant a boost in technological development and a market boost in the biomedical and digital spheres. It’s not just about troubles, but also opportunities. If startups have good teams and we as institutions find a way to offer more effective support during the pandemic, then there is potential for success stories.”