First International Conference Startup Village Finalized at Skolkovo


  • May 28, 2013 9:21pm
  • 178301
  • 0

Today, on May 28, 2013 the results of Startup Village, the first international conference for startup companies and investors, were summarized at the Hypercube of the Skolkovo Innovation Center. The winner of the competition was a project for the creation of an electric car-transformer presented by Skolkovo resident, “Bravo Motors”. The developer received a grant in the amount of 900,000 rubles.

In total, more than 5000 people participated in the conference on May 27 and 28 – startup representatives from Russia, CIS countries, USA, Sweden, Norway, Italy and other countries, including more than 600 investors, venture funds and development institutions, governmental authorities and mass media. Startup Village became a logical finalization of the Russian Startup Tour – a road show of Russian development institutes that took place in March and April 2013 in 16 cities of our country and united more than 200 regional startups.

Key partners of Startup Village were: Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technologies (Skoltech), Skolkovo Technopark, Microsoft corporation, Startup Sauna, TechNode, Rusbase.

Today, various venues at the Startup Village were open the event participants – startups and investors, mentors and business-angels, students and scientists. All pitch-sessions, panel discussions, lectures, seminars and master-classes were open to visitors, everyone could freely move around between the venues, organized both in Hypercube and on the adjacent territory.

Today Startup Village was also visited by the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Dmitri Medvedev, Vice PM Arkadiy Dvorkovich and former Deputy Prime Minister and head of the Government Office, Vladislav Surkov. Guests viewed the projects in the halls dedicated to biomedical and energy-efficient technologies, visited the exposition of the Innovation Center residents’ developments and pitch-sessions with the participation of 20 startups, selected from more than 200 projects and having made it to the finals in the competition at the conference.

Finalists became holders of certificates for the amount of 150,000 rubles each and received the possibility to present their projects to a highly competent panel of judges and win the main prize of the Startup Village – a grant for the amount of 900,000 rubles.

The panel of judges evaluating the projects of the conference finalists consisted of:

  • Pekka Viljakainen, Adviser to the President of the Skolkovo Foundation, ideologist and evangelist of the Startup Village;
  • Sergey Arkhipov, Deputy General Director for innovation issues of public corporation “OMZ”;
  • Andrei Buravin, Deputy General Director of the public corporation “Russian Space Systems”;
  • Vladimir Gershenzon, General Director of ITC “SKANEKS”;
  • Andrei Ivashchenko, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Center of High-Tech “CHIMRAR”;
  • Alexander Kuleshov, Director of the A.A. Kharkevich Institute of Information Transmission Problems;
  • Andrei Morozov, Chairman of the Board of Administration of “WEB Innovations” Foundation;
  • Igor Taber, Director for Russia Intel Capital;
  • Yuri Udaltsov, Director for innovation development – head of Analytical division, member of administration of public corporation “ROSNANO”, member of administration of Infrastructure and Educational Programmes Foundation.

Winners of the first international conference Startup Village are:

  • 1st place – Bravo Motors with its project E-Trike, an ultra compact electric car-transformer which will allow driving around a megalopolis without traffic jams and avoid problems with parking. This car has a joystick for a steering wheel and a tablet computer for a regular panel. In 5 seconds such vehicle can literally “tighten up” and decrease in length 1,5 times;
  • 2nd place – InsidErPharm with technology of injecting chemotherapeutic agents in erythrocytes, in demand for treatment of oncologic diseases;
  • 3rd place – T8 which developed and brought to market equipment on the basis of WDM technologies providing information transfer speed of 100 Gbit/sec and bandwidth up to 8.8 Tbit/sec.

Winners received certificates for 900,000, 600,000 and 300,000 rubles respectively. After awarding the winners of the Startup Village at the conference closing ceremony, Adviser to the President of the Skolkovo Foundation Pekka Viljakainen thanked the event participants and stated: “These were breathtaking two days. Based on the feedback at Twitter and messages which I received daily on my e-mail, we can conclude that you liked it. I think we don’t need a nice facade, we need to be in touch with each other, and such connections were established at the conference. We will meet again in May 2014.” The main ideologist and evangelist of the event says that the international conference Startup Village will become an annual event.

 

Сколково en