At Startup Village 2016 in the Skolkovo technology park, 13.8 million rubles were handed out to startups

This year we were in Russia for the first time during the Startup Village in Skolkovo and, of course, could not miss such a significant event in the world of innovative entrepreneurship.

The 4th international conference Startup Village, which took place on June 2-3, was attended by 250 members of the jury, 300 speakers, 500 journalists and 1,500 investors, many of whom came from both near and far abroad. On the first day of the event, 12,000 participants arrived , and a total of 20,000 in two days , which puts it on a par with the best events in Silicon Valley.

The culmination of the conference is the selection and awarding of winners of the Startup Village 2016 competition of innovative projects. About a thousand applications were submitted to the competition, 278 teams were selected to the semifinals, and 26 projects got into the final of the competition , each of which received 300 thousand rubles.

According to the jury, the project “Multicubic” (CINEMOOD) , a portable cinema for children and parents, won first place and a prize of 3 million rubles . The second place and 2 million rubles was received by the AGCT project , which is developing an innovative method for treating HIV infections. The third place and 1 million rubles went to Target Medicals, a company developing a drug that can significantly increase the effectiveness of the treatment of arterial hypertension and a number of other cardiovascular diseases.

But we got another list of the top 3 projects that were presented at the conference:
OZ PhotoExpert - developed a program for conducting quick examinations of digital photographs, used to prevent fraud in the field of digital document management. TRYFIT TECHNOLOGIES - created a product that allows the buyer to buy shoes from an online retailer using a 3D model of their feet. Cloud Personal Safety Lab (CPS Lab) - made smart bracelets to manage enterprise performance using analytics on the basic physiological indicators of employees.

Startups not only competed in front of a professional jury on stage, but also presented their projects to the court of guests, investors and experts at the innovative Startup Bazaar bazaar, where you can personally meet hundreds of startups and their founders.

Of course, there were some representatives of accelerators and business incubators. Traditionally, the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) was presented , which provides financial and expert support in the early stages of project development.

But our interest was riveted by the acceleration program Startup Kazakhstan , which came from Kazakhstan, the organizers of which, in addition to investments, promise to help adopted startups get their first corporate clients to test business models and test technology.

After living in Silicon Valley for a long time, we were initially quite skeptical of the Startup Village in the Skolkovo technology park, but the level of organization of the event, the quality of the startups presented and the number of visitors pleasantly surprised us. Startup Village is truly a worthy international startup event, which is worth visiting for anyone involved in innovative entrepreneurship in the CIS and Eastern Europe.

PS We described our impressions in more detail in the video:

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