The Baltic3i competition was won by four groups of IT project developers from Kaliningrad, Kazan, Moscow and Vilnius. The world's first ever competition between start-ups from the Baltic states was organized by the Skolkovo Foundation and the Corporation for the development of the Kaliningrad Region. The winners will receive grants worth 3 million rubles from the Skolkovo Foundation.
A total of 150 projects were entered for the Baltic3i competition, 12 of which made it through to the final. The finalists were developed by teams from Lithuania, Germany, Moscow, Kirov, Samara, Tomsk, Kazan and Kaliningrad. The winner in the 'Social field' category was AMS Labs, a company from Vilnius, with its project 'Adaptive Training Solutions'. The Lithuanian team had come up with a technology making it possible to determine the extent to which someone you are talking to on-line is engaged in the conversation or in their work, using camera-based pupil-iris analysis, according to a local website.
Kaliningrad, bird eye view on historical part of the city
First place in the category 'Strategic computer technologies and software' went to a team of software developers from Kazan. Their project was 'A registration service for DLS smart purchase', which makes it possible to take into account all customer purchases paid for either in cash or on a cash-free basis. Moreover, the system makes it possible to combine various loyalty programs on a single bank card, and provides access to a personal office in which vouchers for purchases can be stored in digital form.
The category 'Energy-efficiency in utilities and residential services' was won by a team from Kaliningrad, with a project entitled 'Situational management of electricity consumption at major infrastructure projects'. The award for best innovative project in the Kaliningrad Region went to 'Cloud Personal Safety' (CPS), which provides new ways of working with so-called 'panic buttons', designed to ensure the safety of adults or children. The young team behind the start-up, some of whom came from Moscow and some from Kaliningrad, came up with the idea of creating panic buttons on watches or bracelets, connecting them not only to the emergency services but also to private security firms.
According to the Director of IT Project Development at the Skolkovo Foundation, Sergey Shubin, the aim of the competition was to draw the attention of the IT industry in Russia and other countries to Kaliningrad. "The idea of holding a competition came up because we are aware of the initiatives of the government of the Kaliningrad Region, the I. Kant Baltic Federal University and the IT community with regard to creating an active and better developed IT cluster here. On the whole we understand this idea and support it, and we felt there was every reason to make it a reality," Shubin told a local website. "A competition is a very good tool for seeking out talented people, companies, projects and so on. It is therefore a tool that enables us to see what we've got out there, at start-up level."
The standard of the projects turned out to be higher than expected. The Kaliningrad Region has great appeal to IT experts. As Sergey Shubin observed: "This is shown by the wide geographical area covered by the competition: Samara, Kazan, Moscow and Lithuania were all represented."