New generation of leaders: four Russian innovation companies win Generation S prize
The third international forum “Open Innovations” handed out the awards to the winners of the acceleration program Generation S
Nov 08, 2013
19 participants fought for the right to be included in the list of leaders. The jury that consisted of Russian and international investors selected four best teams based on the final presentations of the contest participants. All of theam are from Russia.
The project called Appercode developed by a team from Novosibirsk won the top prize. Two projects took the second place – BioMicroGels from Yekaterinburg and 3DMetalPrint from Ufa. WayRay from Moscow placed third. The winners shared between themselves the bonus pool of 5 million rubles.
The top winner – project Appercode from Novosibirsk – is a unique platform that allows to develop mobile applications quickly and inexpensively, which is to allow to significantly cut the costs of small and medium businesses. Thanks to the new technology one developer will now be able to write software for three or four operating systems simultaneously. That would simplify the creation of professional mobile applications fro iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8. Winning the contest is of great help to the team, says its leader Denis Sharov.
"We are a small company. It is very difficult to explain your idea to everybody. The most important thing is that people believed us. The great number of experts who selected the participants for this contest believed in us. It will be easier for us now. Thanks to the contest we got three main advantages. First of all, it will simplify the introduction of the product to the market. The second thing is that now we have financing to fine-tune the product and to present it. And the third advantage is that we get a lot of publicity so that maximum number of people could find out about the project," he said.
The second place went to project called BioMicroGels from Yekaterinburg, which developed an innovative solution to clear water of petroleum products that can be used both on the water surface and in the depth of water, and project 3DMetalPrint from Ufa, which allows creating the technology for highly durable parts from metal powder by using a 3D printer. The third place winner – WayRay from Moscow – has developed a navigation system that uses the technology of augmented reality and projects the image on the windshield of a car.
All the projects represented at the contest were absolutely different, but equally talented. So, it was not easy to select the winners, admits Ekaterina Bulychova, deputy director of the Center for the Innovative Development of Moscow.
"The companies that reached the semi-finals and finals are really interesting names, interesting faces and interesting technologies. The experts argued for a long time in order to choose the top winner, as they could not come to an agreement. Each team is always missing something: some lack understanding of the market, some lack sales management. It was difficult to make the choice. But the technology is always very interesting, the development is very thought-out and the market well analyzed. The quality is very good," she said.
Ekaterina Bulychova adds that the international and Russian investors agree that the level of the projects and the contest participants is unusually high. Thus, the organizers plan to set up a new start-up project that would involve a great number of the companies. And as the experience of this year shows, new ideas will come soon.
The project called Appercode developed by a team from Novosibirsk won the top prize. Two projects took the second place – BioMicroGels from Yekaterinburg and 3DMetalPrint from Ufa. WayRay from Moscow placed third. The winners shared between themselves the bonus pool of 5 million rubles.
The top winner – project Appercode from Novosibirsk – is a unique platform that allows to develop mobile applications quickly and inexpensively, which is to allow to significantly cut the costs of small and medium businesses. Thanks to the new technology one developer will now be able to write software for three or four operating systems simultaneously. That would simplify the creation of professional mobile applications fro iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone and Windows 8. Winning the contest is of great help to the team, says its leader Denis Sharov.
"We are a small company. It is very difficult to explain your idea to everybody. The most important thing is that people believed us. The great number of experts who selected the participants for this contest believed in us. It will be easier for us now. Thanks to the contest we got three main advantages. First of all, it will simplify the introduction of the product to the market. The second thing is that now we have financing to fine-tune the product and to present it. And the third advantage is that we get a lot of publicity so that maximum number of people could find out about the project," he said.
The second place went to project called BioMicroGels from Yekaterinburg, which developed an innovative solution to clear water of petroleum products that can be used both on the water surface and in the depth of water, and project 3DMetalPrint from Ufa, which allows creating the technology for highly durable parts from metal powder by using a 3D printer. The third place winner – WayRay from Moscow – has developed a navigation system that uses the technology of augmented reality and projects the image on the windshield of a car.
All the projects represented at the contest were absolutely different, but equally talented. So, it was not easy to select the winners, admits Ekaterina Bulychova, deputy director of the Center for the Innovative Development of Moscow.
"The companies that reached the semi-finals and finals are really interesting names, interesting faces and interesting technologies. The experts argued for a long time in order to choose the top winner, as they could not come to an agreement. Each team is always missing something: some lack understanding of the market, some lack sales management. It was difficult to make the choice. But the technology is always very interesting, the development is very thought-out and the market well analyzed. The quality is very good," she said.
Ekaterina Bulychova adds that the international and Russian investors agree that the level of the projects and the contest participants is unusually high. Thus, the organizers plan to set up a new start-up project that would involve a great number of the companies. And as the experience of this year shows, new ideas will come soon.