The finalists of the IT-track charmed LeWeb
Last week Paris hosted the eleventh LeWeb – the largest European Technological Forum which was attended by over three and a half thousand people from eighty countries around the world. In the exhibition area there was opened a separate Russian Innovation Pavilion where, among others, there were exhibited the finalists of the IT-track of GenerationS – PiligrimXXI and AddReality.
Both projects represent one of the most "hot" technologies – augmented reality applications. If the PiligrimXXI works as a small "time machine" adding to the screen of the device of a tourist buildings and characters who inhabited the considered area in the past, the AddReality addresses their business model not to users but to businesses: it is a platform for creation of interactive content for displays at the points of sale. Applications built on the basis of this platform recognize the buyer and start the dialogue.
Diana Sorina, a co-founder of the startup PiligrimXXI, said that following the results of LeWeb the project expanded the range of potential European customers and received an invitation to undergo acceleration at IBM. Sergey Galeev, General Director of AddReality, said that in the result of the trip there have been signed preliminary partnership agreements with representatives of the five European companies from France, Germany, England and Spain, and there have been received an offer from the French subsidiary of Microsoft for cooperation in the field of joint sales of digital signage solutions for banks. AddReality is now preparing for the first commercial pilot projects in Europe with new clients, working through the issues of intellectual protection with the Fabernovel Company (France).
"Among the Russian companies at the forum there was exhibited CDN Video which entered in the portfolio of the "Leader Innovations" venture fund in 2013 with the participation of RVC. "Russian Innovation Pavilion was noticeable on the background of stands of other countries (separate pavilions was presented by Sweden showing high growth venture capital market in recent years and Berlin actively positioning its start-up infrastructure) – said Ilya Kurmyshev, the manager to promote innovation activities at RVC. – Startups and more mature technological companies from Russia presented in our pavilion not only did not lost on the background of other businesses represented at LeWeb, but were among the most notable and striking exhibitors ".
The main trends of the LeWeb according to experts are "sharing" and "collaborative" economy, digital healthcare, "smart" materials, wearable devices and electric vehicles. Russian participants were among the speakers. Jane Zavalishina (Yandex) told how to bring internet technology into new industries. Alexander Galitsky (Almaz Capital), Alexander Lazarev (Maxfield Capital) and Kseniya Yolkina (Yandex) conducted the section of "Look to the East", where they were talking about the potential of Russia.
