Business news

On 14-15 April Minsk played host to a round of the All-Russian Startup Tour arranged by the Skolkovo Foundation. About 900 applications were received on five themes: information technologies, biological and medical technologies, energy-efficient technologies, industrial technologies and materials, innovations for children. Specialists of the Skolkovo Foundation noted that the jury assessed the projects of 73 teams that came through the preliminary expert selection. “It is a record high number of selected projects in one city. The geography of the finalists is wide. Those are participants from Minsk, Vitebsk, Grodno, Kherson Oblast, Nova Kakhovka, Pinsk, Gomel, Brest, Orsha, Baranovichi, Mogilev, Novopolotsk, Soligorsk and Saint Petersburg,” the press service said. 17 winners were named out of the displayed projects.

“We presented all the winners with the invitation cards to attend the Startup Village, Russia’s annual biggest startup conference that is due at the Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow on 2-3 June. Four projects received the right to partake in the Startup Village without supplementary expert examination,” the press service said. These are Bakhram Ismailov’s Shople, Mikhail Vaga’s VAGA Hand Energy/Energy is in Your Hands, Vladimir Khryshchanovich’s transplantation treatment for hypoparathyroidism and Vladimir Davydov’s DRONEX.

Pekka Viljakainen, the advisor to the president of Skolkovo, stressed as he was awarding the winners that no one invests in the science in the cause of science only. According to him, the main goal of startups is to earn. In his words, Belarusian participants must be part of the Startup Village in Moscow. “The conference will get together 10,000 participants: investors, entrepreneurs, representatives of venture capital and development funds. You need to be in the heart of this knowledge,” Pekka Viljakainen said addressing the participants of the Minsk startup round.