Russian Corporations Have Chosen 141 Startups to Implement Technologies into the Real Sector

The five-day intensive of federate acceleration program GenerationS gathered hundreds of startups fr om all Russia, all of them work in different economic sectors and evolve technological innovations. During those five days lots of experts, business-trainers and market participants spoke to GenerationS’ participants. «GenerationS’ offline session this week probably was the most positive place in Russia with a concentration of ambitions and intelligence here» – commented Gulnara Bikkulova, RVC’s board member, the head of GenerationS.

Offline session’s culmination was announcement of the strongest startups, participants of 7 sectoral corporate accelerators. 141 projects were divided to different directions: Aerospace (16), Power&Energy (17), BiotechMed (20), Robotics (22), Oil&Gas (23), Telecom Idea (24) SmartCity (19).

Offline session’s operator GVA LaunchGurus and RVC created a dense and rich program: teams worked in groups, consulted their mentors, improved their business-models and projects’ presentations, made some business relations. Motivating speeches were combined with practical consulting and individual recommendations for teams. Gulnara Bikkulova advised participants to interact with each other more actively and to remember alliances conception: «Every one of you has a chance to understand that there are projects like yours in the nearest regions and even at in a pair of kilometers fr om you. And probably the best decision for you would be to bring it all together». Gor Nahapetyan, a serial entrepreneur and the chairman of the board of graduates of the Moscow School of Management «Skolkovo» advised not to be scared of crisis: «In the time of crises the largest and most interesting project appear. From taxies’ crisis was made Uber, there are dozens of professions which are going to disappear in ten years: librarian, postman. So it is worth to be thought out wh ere to start business. Yes, it is a time of crisis, and we live in it. In financial, social, demographic, ecologic. We have lived in it. And we have to live in it». Vadim Balasho of GVA LaunchGurus said to participants that before asking investors, it is worth to understand the startup’s goal:  «Is the project about science or commerce and making money? The experience of previous years shows that combine everything is not possible. If you are about science you should ask universities for grants, if about money – investors and business-angels». Andrey Serbant, marketing director of Yandex’es projects stated one of the most terrible mistakes made by young entrepreneurs when they do ask corporations: «When you ask investor and begin to tell to him financial model of your project you make a terrible mistake. You have not come to get finances, but to be bought. Tell what you give to people and why a company can make better services if your idea would be bought».

One of the session’s days Elena Levina (NanoServ), Alexey Yuzakov (Promobot) and Lyudmila Bulavkina (Rentamania), GenerationS’ graduates, gave speeches to participants. Bulavkina said that her business (online rent-service of different stuff) is in «blue ocean», on the market, which is not yet developed in Russia: «Man can lend a pair of ice-skates or a masquerade costume, but how it to learn people to lend a polo t-shirt or dress? This I learned during GenerationS. Every day here was like «magic kick». While listening to mentors and experts, I tried to apply their advices to my business. This helped me to come through the business “death valley”».

One other day was an immersion in the national technology initiative. Dmitry Peskov, director of Young Professionals ASI, told about the markets, which will appear in 2035, opening up new windows of opportunities and attracting huge investments. Eugeny Kuznetsov drew attention GenerationS’ participants that each of the markets NTI is not just developing of a narrow segment of technology. «It's an icebreaker, which now breaks the ice and behind it can be a lot of ships. By analogy with the Internet: as a pure data transmission technology is, of course, interesting, but what is important is that in the result of it a huge industry appeared» – said the director of the project office RVC.

In a separate session, representatives of the investment community gave speeches to the startups: Rustam Tiger (Tiger Consulting Group), Vadim Balashov and Zamir Shukhov (GVA LaunchGurus), Olga Avryasova (Skolkovo), Sergei Toporov (LETA Capital), Alexander Vidiborsky (Runa Capital), Eugene Borisov (Kamaflow), Michael Kharuzin (FPI RVC). Rustam Tiger emphasized four points that impress investors: a two-minute pitch presentation, forecast of profit and loss and startup’s «chemistry». «The rest does not affect the investor. But the most important thing is what unites all these criteria, and what the investor wants to hear about your project. I call it “the hit”, a good investment teaser. I assure you, Alisher Usmanov has no laptop with presentations in PowerPoint. But he has charisma and bright chain of logic that answers the question “Why is it needed“», – said Tiger.

Round table discussion named «Why Corporations need startups?» brought together a bright pool of companies. Andrey Sebrant (Yandex), Denis Gusev (ROC Innovation Center OCD), Kirill Kozhevnikov (AFK System), Sergey Maximchuk (Alfa-Bank), Christoph Janssen (Johnson & Johnson), Kirill Smirnov (MasterCard), Andrei Sharov (Sberbank) and Sergey Afanasiev (MTS) discussed prospects of cooperation corporations with small innovative business, narrated about the peculiarities of the processes in their companies and invited startups to cooperate. Sergey Afanasiev, the purchasing director of Information Technology MTS, said that the company for over than 5 years working with startups within the «Telecom Idea», and this year the competition has become a part of GenerationS: «We are confident that this collaboration will result in a thoughtful, high-quality and sustainable solutions that can be considered for implementation» – concluded Sergey.

Startups also have received prizes from GenerationS’ organizers and partners. IBM company, which is the general partner of pre-acceleration program (the first phase of GenerationS), gave  120 thousand dollars cloud mega-grants to five best projects by the IBM experts’ opinion. The operator of GenerationS’ first stage (GVA LaunchGurus) provided to eight startups the opportunity to participate in their programs of acceleration. Microsoft has awarded four best projects chosen by Microsoft’s experts cloud grants, the cash equivalent of each of the grant is 120 thousand US dollars. Company Nanobotmodels Medical Animation chose three winners who will receive a 3D medical animation. One team received two certificates for consulting services and the provision of material and technical base of the «Biruch» Innovation Center for working out the individual stages of the project and analysis of the characteristics of an innovative product from the EFKO Group. Another team received a certificate from the company iPharma for consulting services. RVC has selected 4projects, which will visit two key events in innovation and the venture sphere of Singapore - TechVenture and TechInnovation-2015. Startups will take part in the exhibition and hold pitches to investors. List of winners of special categories available online: http://generation-startup.ru/partners/gifts/.

This year GenerationS is aimed to developing of the «open innovation» tools in corporations. «Corporations within GenerationS got access to hundreds of interesting developments in their domain and have a chance to work out a partnership with projects with the greatest potential for commercialization until the end of this year. Pleases the spirit of our industrial partners, corporations are highly customized to work, provided their experts, and in the final they really expect deals with startups» – said Gulnara Bikkulova.

The next step of GenerationS is offline corporate accelerators in seven sectoral directions: SmartCity (smart city and technologies for life), BiotechMed (medicine and biotechnology), Oil & Gas (technology in the oil and gas industry), Power & Energy (technology of modern power generation), Aerospace (technology for the aerospace industry ), Robotics (robotics and automation systems) and Telecom Idea (telecommunications technology). About half of the projects selected to participate in the industry accelerators, gets to the final. Some of them will reach GenerationS’ super-final, which will be held at the corporate venture summit in November, 20th in Moscow. According to its results only 3 projects will become the winners of GenerationS-2015 and will share the cash prize fund of RVC and GenerationS’ partners. Details of wh ere and when will the accelerators happen can be found on the website: http://generation-startup.ru/accelerator/.

GenerationS-2015 has engaged a number of partners from the Russian and international corporations: The Group RusHydro, KES Holding, OAO MOESK, Fund «Energy without borders», PAO RAO EES Vostok, Tavrida Electric, Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), ZAO "Sberbank Technology", NPO Android Technics,  NPO Saturn, RCC «Energia in the name of S.P. Korolev», OAO Salute, GC MORTON, ROO «Russian technical society», ZAO «Tatneftekhiminvest Holding», Johnson & Johnson, GC Farmkontrakt, PO Sibbiofarm and others. Full list of partners GenerationS available here: http://generation-startup.ru/partners/.

The list of projects which have passed into corporate accelerators is published on our site. Learn more about all the participants of accelerator: http://generation-startup.ru/community/participants/startups/?type=SEMIFINA….