Representatives of the scientific and technological center and investment funds arrived in Omsk as part of the Russian StartUp Tour to search for new talents that will receive grants to run projects.
The organizers of the Russian StartUp Tour are the Skolkovo Foundation, the Zvorykinsky Project and the Russian Venture Company. Omsk is the fourth city to receive the headhunters for young talent. When speaking about the tour, participants invariably utter the same words: young innovators have to "simmer" in an environment with the necessary scientific and informational resources, and it is only possible to encourage interest in startups in this environment. "We are planning to launch the development of the startup community,” said Sergey Blintsov, whose Zvorykinsky project has over the past four years given a path to development for 58 new ideas. “Including in Omsk, we have launched a series of activities that will contribute to the development of this environment – resources and infrastructure that will allow people to meet and work on relevant and trendy projects that are popular at the domestic and international level. And for this, cooperation is necessary."
According Blintsov, about ten projects will be chosen in Omsk, and each will receive a premium of 50-300 thousand rubles, depending on their stage of development. In this case, the largest grant is 1 million rubles. Interest is focused primarily in the IT-sector, medicine, energy efficiency, and nuclear and space technology.
Pekka Vilyakaynen, advisor to the president of the Skolkovo Foundation, adds our country doesn’t live on raw material alone: "In Russia, there is potential, and it is not associated with gas or oil, but with talented young people. They will represent the new face of the country."
The smiling and good-natured Finn knows what he says. At age 7, he did not listen to his grandfather, who, as a co-founder of Nokia, forbid his own grandson to start his a business and guaranteed him a place at the transnational giant. But at 13 years old, Pekka did open his own business, and it is therefore right to engage in the selection of young entrepreneurs. "I am a little Finnish oligarch,” Pekka said, smiling and speaking in perfect Russian. He added in English that he sees great potential in the IT-sector. “Innovations here can happen anywhere - in London, New York or Omsk. The only thing need for this is an idea and a great team."
Omsk native Dmitry Kislenko (pictured) can be an example of this, and one of which the organizers of the Russian StartUp Tour are well aware of. At just 28, he was the deputy director of Industrial Geodetic Systems, which became a Skolkovo resident. His team’s project was a high precision positioning system with an accuracy of a few centimeters. It is already being implemented at about 10 sites, including St. Petersburg, Tyumen and Gubkinsky. "This is a bit like a navigator in a car, but the units of accuracy are not meters but centimeters. We are deploying ground-based infrastructure that enables coordinates to be determined with a very high accuracy," Dmitry said. Possible applications are quite wide-ranging - from agriculture to monitoring deformations in engineering structures. Dmitry considers the first grant of 5 million rubles from Skolkovo insufficient, so this summer he and dozens of his friends will apply for a grant with a budget of 30 million rubles. "It's nice that Omsk has finally joined the list of cities in which innovation will begin to develop," Dmitry concluded.
Ekaterina Kril
Source: omskzdes.ru