Demo Day for financial accelerator: the finest FinTech start-ups , bank-awarded prize money and ticket to GenerationS preaccelerator

At the end of FinTech Accelerator 2016 RVC representatives chose the startup that was given the opportunity to complete the first stage of GenerationS accelerator , bypassing the stage of primary selection. It was the project Risk Locker. The creators of the project offered a service capable of protecting b2b sector against currency risks and successfully demonstrated its relevance, importance and practical applicability in financial sector.

Andrey Sharenkov, RVC representative, forecast great possibilities for Risk Locker project team. This is what he said to the participants of the accelerator : "What you have already done is just the beginning. GenerationS was officially launched three days ago. This year we have introduced an independent track in financial sector. The track was co-supported by Bank of Russia. Together, we are going to select the best FinTech startups who will appear at Finopolis Forum. Moscow Exchange and QIWI also became corporate partners of the track».

During the financial accelerator the experts also recapped the results of AK BARS Bank competition which consisted in finding solutions to business cases. These solutions are believed to help the largest bank of Tatarstan change the traditional way of running business. The best solution was presented by PassToBuss project, a Business incubator resident. The project team have developed bus traffic control system, which provides banks with additional functionality in promoting banking services and scoring potential borrowers. The project team was awarded a cash prize worth of 100 000 rubles.

«I was fortunate to witness the launch of the financial accelerator, and I would like to mention that 60-70% of the projects presented for the Demo Day are showing clear signs of progress. For this we should partly thank the accelerator and the people, working on the projects. My colleagues and I have noticed a few interesting ideas: even if they do not contain much of FinTech at first glance, it just takes a deeper look to identify different models of interacting with the bank. Some projects have been invited for a job interview, whiles others will probably start to be prototyped, – said Damir Galiev, the head of the project office of innovation development at AK BARS Bank.

The accelerator has dealt with the total of 60 projects, of which Voice Unlock project landed a valuable prize in the form of mentorship and assistance from IT Park Kazan business incubator. The Voice Unlock project is a voice recognition device, designed for financial institutions.

Selecting the finest projects was possible due to the work of the expert jury that consisted of Ravil Sirazeev, CEO of the Association of Innovative regions of Russia, Yaroslav Shvetsov, regional representative of KamaFlow investment company in the Republic of Tatarstan Vasiliy Yuzenchuk, managing partner of RiseMaker marketing agency Ilya Aksenov, CEO of RiseMaker marketing agency, representatives of "AK BARS" Bank , the Bank of Kazan, RVC and other business angels.

It should be reminded that the participation in GenerationS pre-accelerator was possible due to the fact that FinTech Accelerator is a hub preparing projects for further participation in GenerationS accelerator. GenerationS is a federal accelerator for technology start-ups, in which the best projects are selected by the results of a multi-stage examination to receive intensive development and opportunities for investment. GenerationS has been held by RVC since 2013.