The second day of Open Innovations-2015 is over

“What should the city do to develop in its role of a global provider of innovation?” How do exporter cities emerge in the world market of technological entrepreneurship? What does a metropolis need to become home for world-class technology schools and corporations?” — these are the questions that the organizers ask the participants, the experts and the guests.

Those who help to find answers to these questions include several participants of GenerationS-2015.

Today, the projects represented in the start-up area are the following: Agromultibot (Robotics zone), Heat-El Geo (Cleantech zone), Dmitry Lopatin’s Printed solar cell, which we discussed in great detail yesterday (Cleantech zone) and Zinoferr (Industrial zone).

Agromultibot project is an autonomous mobile robot for harvesting melons and berries in the fields. Natalia Usacheva, the director of Agromultibot LLC, said: “At Open Innovations, we would like to introduce our product, to build new relationships, especially with investors, to look at the other developments. Here, at the Forum, we had a chance to communicate with those who we had already met. Unlike harvesting, which can be done in unmanned mode due to our project, the development of technology startups cannot be performed in isolation: communication is necessary, as well as a special environment".

Heat-El Geo is a participant project from Moscow, a member of Power&Energy corporate accelerator. Heat-El Geo is an energy-independent autonomous device installed on geothermal wells. Depending on the purpose of its use, the system can produce different combinations of electricity, heat, salt concentrate and fresh water, supplying remote users.

The members of the project team are already glad with the outcome of their participation in the technology show: "First and foremost, our goal at the Open Innovations was to find new partners and investors. And, you know, we are actually doing that. Yesterday we had a very productive discussion with our potential partners from Iran, and we’ll probably cooperate with them. There are also other agreements, and today we arranged the first meeting outside the Forum."

One more project of ours which was shown today in the startup zone is Zinoferr, a two-component anti-corrosive product based on an inorganic binder. It is intended for corrosion protection of metal surfaces used in the open air, in contact with the sea, fresh, or potable water and petroleum products.

Every day, five technology businesses whose projects have passed a rigorous selection present them at open stage sessions to the experts in the form of a brief pitch and compete for the attention of investors and the title of the best startup of Open Innovations-2015. Today GenerationS was represented at startup show by LighTech, a project of the Rostov-on-Don, which is a semifinalist of SmartCity track. It was Ildar Sadykov who made the pitch.

LighTech is a unique flexible continuous linear light source on the basis of electroluminophor, and its developers see a wide range of its applications as a source of active light: use on the roads, in real estate, for cyclists, on children's backpacks and bags, and even on gloves for the deaf which will enable them to communicate in the dark. By 2018, LighTech team is planning to have 20% of the market, and the Russian market, according to the developers’ estimates, is worth 16 billion.

Ildar’s pitch was impressive, and the main thing that attracted the experts’ attention in the course of the subsequent discussion was the business model of the team. The recommendations of the panel seemed unexpected: for instance, Zamir Shukhov, the director of GVA LaunchGurus, the operating company of pre-accelerator of GenerationS-2015, recommended the team to get a patent for the technology in China and manufacture the products there. “To prove that the technology can be popular it is necessary to start manufacturing”, Zamir emphasized.