RVC and Skolkovo Fund presented Russian startups at the Slush international technology forum

The joint delegation was headed by chairman of the board of Skolkovo Foundation Igor Drozdov and Deputy General Director Gulnara Bikkulova RVC.

Skolkovo fund brought representatives of 47 companies that demonstrated their developments at the exhibition arranged at the conference. Four Skolkovo companies were preliminary selected by the organisers for participation in the competition of the best start-ups, and one of them — Marvel Mind (resident of the space technology and telecommunications cluster, engaged in development of highly precise navigation systems inside the buildings) — reached the semi-final.

Representatives of Skolkovo fund and companies-participants held altogether more than a hundred of business meetings with representatives of the international investment community, foreign technopark and innovation centers including Director of Global Accelerator Network, which is an international association of acceleration programs, joining more than 80 accelerators in more than 100 cities of the world.

Itorum company presented its solutions in the field of industrial VR at the meeting with the Investment Director of Volvo Group Venture Capital.

Special interest of the public was drawn by Texel Portal with its virtual fitting-room that makes it possible to buy clothes without going outside. For the two conference days, 569 people were scanned at its stand, 5121 3D-photos were sent, and 472 people shared their 3D-photos in social networks. Average number of people in the queue for scanning wasn’t less than 12 persons. CNN, CNBC, Yle TV1 created dispatches about Texel Portal; journalists of three European technology journals took interview from the company representatives, more than 10 Periscope-broadcasts were made by the popular bloggers.

RVC presented to the international audience developments of 11 teams — graduates from the GenerationS technology start-ups accelerator. Results of the conference for them are tens of the potential partners and several hundreds of contacts. Founders of SmikTech projects started negotiations with Nokia about the use of self-cleaning coatings for electromotive cars; they also engaged representatives of Samsung by application of this solution for domestic appliances. Promobot team (Skolkovo resident) agreed with Finair about elaboration of possibilities to use robots-consultants at the Helsinki airport, it also discussed cooperation with Nokia and Toyota. Participants of the augmented reality project Piligrim XXI started elaboration of their solution integration with the Asian building companies and European investors and venture funds from Europe and USA. Founders of Kera-Tech biotechnology company received recommendations related to entering on the Iran market. Samocat sharing startup team tried their minitransport rental system in Helsinki, met with the representatives of the business-angels syndicate and city projects accelerator.

Pekka Viljakainen, adviser to the president of Skolkovo Foundation: «The deals are closed directly at the forum on rare occasions. Real transactions can be seen three-four months later. However, here the relationships are established. Here we have about 50 companies and I expect that each of them will have a chance to gain an investment transaction or partner.»

Vasily Belov, Senior Innovation Vice-President of Skolkovo fund: I think that the key result is not participation in the competition but the work program at the forum fields. It became a part of our already standard support service for the companies entering the foreign markets. Investors from the Northern and Central Europe came here. Significant number of the American venture funds, investors from China and Japan attend as well. Here we presented the first Russian 3D bioprinter, module energy storage system, mobile VR-headset and mobile VR-platform, portable cinema for children and many other perspective projects — perspective from the point of view of entering the foreign markets."

As a part of the conference, Skolkovo Fund and Russian Venture Company (RVC) announced the setting up of the joint venture fund. Igor Drozdov and Deputy CEO of RVC Gulnara Bikkulova told the SLUSH participant about it.

Igor Drozdov, Chairman of the Management Board of Skolkovo Fund: «We intend to set up a new tool that will be called Skolkovo Ventures in partnership with RVC using RVC funds, but not only RVC’s. We expect that private investors will also join this initiative. The objective is to raise investments for our start-ups. We have an extensive projects portfolio — about 1.5 thousand companies. We believe that many of them have excellent perspectives and we are ready to invest in these projects.»

Gulnara Bikkulova, Deputy General Director of RVC: «Within the framework of our roadmap prepared in cooperation with Skolkovo Fund, we brought to Helsinki 11 teams, graduates from GenerationS of previous years. The world of technology is creative by definition. Start-ups, investors from the different countries meet in joint projects and together change traditional industries. Slush has splendid infrastructure for organisation of such interaction and we are glad that GenerationS and Skolkovo start-ups received new opportunities for their business development. In 2008, when the first SLUSH conference was held in Finland, there was no venture market in Russia at all. No one knew what a startup is. Today we see a great number of start-ups from Russia entering global markets; thousands of new start-up companies emerge in Russia annually. This is the result of joint activities of all Russian development institutes».

About RVC — a state fund of funds and a development institute of the Russian Federation. Main activity objectives: encouraging the creation of Russia’s venture capital industry and performing functions of the National Project Office of the Technology Initiative (NTI). RVC’s authorized capital amounts to more than 30 billion rubles. 100% of the company capital is owned in full by the Russian Federation represented by the Russian Federal Agency for State Property (Rosimuschestvo). The total number of RVC funds has reached 21, their total size is 32.4 billion rubles. The share of RVC is 19.9 billion rubles. The number of innovative companies invested by RVC funds has reached 196. The total volume of approved investments is 18.4 billion rubles.

Skolkovo Fund is a non-profit organisation founded according to initiative of the President of the Russian Federation in September 2010. The objective of the Fund is mobilisation of the Russia’s resources in the field of up-to-date applied research through the creation of advantageous environment for research and development activity in five prioritised directions of technological development: energy efficiency, space, biomedicine, nuclear and computer technology. The Fund has imposed functions related to management of a project of creation of the Skolkovo Innovation Center, which activity is regulated by a special law ensuring special economic conditions for the participating companies (at the end of first six months of 2015, their number reached 1521). Total revenue of the participating companies is 95.5 billion rubles. The raised 21.1 billion rubles of investments, create 21.8 thousand of work places, obtained 1100 patents. An important part of Skolkovo ecosystem is a research university — Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (SkolTech) founded and operating with support of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By 2020, more than 2 million square meters of production, office and residential premises will be built in Skolkovo, 35 000 people will work in the innovation center.