Pulsar Venture Capital was chosen to run the Industrial Cluster program for the GenerationS-2014 contest

Its experience in the venture capital market and in the business of acceleration innovation-focused companies in Russia and California’s Silicon Valley has enabled Pulsar Venture Capital to come up with an acceleration training program geared to help technology companies in early stages to develop and grow proactively. The Industrial Cluster acceleration program aims to bring working business organizations to market and create opportunities for their development and success.

Companies and project teams from Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States with a ready product prototype or a product sample are invited to participate in he program. As additional mandatory conditions, project teams must include two or more people with relevant competencies, and startup companies must have significant potential for capitalization growth. Projects that have completed the research and development stage and started work on the design and prototype, technology commercialization or implementation on a commercial scale are given priority.

Projects in the following areas are considered for the Industrial Cluster accelerator: embedded systems, robotics, electronics and microelectronics; new and advanced materials, composite materials and nanosystems, security and terrorism prevention systems (biometric control systems, sensors and analyzers); navigation and defense technologies; engineering and electrical engineering; construction technologies.

Participants in the industrial-track accelerator will receive high-intensity classroom training to develop their business competencies and investor relations skills, as well as receiving new opportunities to bring mentors and new team members. Industry experts will tell the class members how to make projects more appealing to investors and how to present projects to investors effectively. The technology block of the training program will give participants an idea of their projects’ potential for commercialization, commercial implementation and engineering.

The best program graduates will enter the GenerationS contest finals to present their projects to Russian and international investors during the Open Innovation Moscow International Forum, as well as to officials representing departments of the Moscow City Hall interested in innovative solutions to implement in the urban environment.

Applications in the Industrial Cluster are accepted until June 30, 2014.

“Pulsar Venture Capital is grateful to the RVC and the Moscow Center for Innovative Development for their confidence in us and their high regard for our bid. Our efforts as a sector operator of the Industrial Cluster acceleration program will be aimed at developing new teams into full-fledged businesses,” CEO of the Pulsar Venture Capital Group Pavel Korolev said. “Given the strong potential of Russian entrepreneurs in high-tech sectors with industrial applications, we are positive that we can grow some of the participating startups into domestic and global market leaders.”

“Industrial manufacturing projects are still a fragile area for Russia; moreover, few startups have become success stories in the real sector of the economy. However, investors’ focus is shifting from IT projects, especially from ecommerce and mobile apps to manufacturing. We observe this trend in the market as a whole as well as from specific embedded-system hackathons, and from last year’s GenerationS. Last year, OMIRobotics (a startup that designed a snowplow robot) found an investor in Igor Matsanyuk. We have found discovering, selecting and accelerating industrial (manufacturing) projects much more complex and much more interesting. This is a real challenge!” said Ekaterina Bulycheva, Deputy General Director of the Moscow Center for Innovative Development.

“Russia has few teams capable of helping ‘hard’ startups for now. Our hope is that Pulsar Venture Capital’s experience with its project portfolio, their understanding of organizing interactions with customers and strategic investors among established manufacturing companies, their extensive network of Russian and international partners will boost the quality standard of the GenerationS industrial cluster nationwide program,” Gulnara Bikkulova, Head of the RVC’s Innovation Markets Department, said.

The GenerationS nationwide accelerator contest for technology startups was first run in 2013. The contest is organized by the Russian Venture Company (RVC) and the Moscow Center for Innovative Development and receives support by the Moscow City Hall. GenerationS is currently taking applications from prospective participants for four sector tracks:

— Industrial (Industrial solutions)
— IT (Information technology)
— BioTechMed (Biotech and healthcare)
— CleanTech (Energy efficiency and resource saving)