The second stage of the Russian Startup Tour began this week in the Siberian city of Tomsk, a renowned innovations hub.
One of the facilities at Tomsk's Special Economic Zone. Photo: Investment Portal of the Tomsk Region
The tour is Russia’s biggest innovations roadshow; its job is to unearth and stimulate promising startups in Russia’s regions that could ultimately help diversify the country’s economy. A pitch competition will see the top firms invited to Moscow for the Startup Village in June.
"This year, like previous years, we're expecting new interesting projects and teams out of Siberia that will get the chance to participate in the Startup Village and possibly become Skolkovo residents," said Skolkovo vice president Kirill Kaem, who is leading the delegation to Tomsk.
Among the 20 Tomsk projects battling it out will be: android robots and control methods; a DNA microchip to identify genetic predisposition to breast cancer; and infra-red gas burners for water-heating equipment.
The winning startups are chosen from four categories, or “tracks”: Information technology; biological and medical technology; efficient-energy technology; and new industrial technology and materials.
The event is to be held at the city’s modern Tomsk Engineering Center inside its federal, 200-hectare Special Economic Zone, which has 58 resident companies taking advantage of a wealth of benefits to accelerate their business.
The tour was launched last week in the southern city of Rostov-on-Don, where Skolkovo president Victor Vekselberg told more than 100 startup CEOs: “We want you to have the confidence that if you have an idea, this idea will find support in us, to try to make it happen.”
The tour’s format is the same in each city: Day one is devoted to the training side, with master-classes for young innovators and round table discussions, while day two sees the pitch sessions, where fledgling companies present their products and services on stage and are judged by a panel of experts. The winning startups are invited to the Startup Village at the Skolkovo Innovation Center in Moscow in June.
The Tomsk City Government is a strong backer of small and medium-sized enterprises, with a program in place that includes competitive grants, subsidies and logistics support to help businesses get off the ground.
The Tomsk State University of Control Systems and Electronics is one of the top innovations institutions in the country, while the Tomsk State National Research University is the oldest and best in Siberia, renowned as a “territory of innovation” with 12 collective use centers, the Inter-University Center for Technical Innovation and a host of other top facilities.
Both are members of the Russian Association of Entrepreneurial Universities, which was founded in 2011 by the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and several other institutions.
Tomsk is a city of half a million people with nine universities and 15 research institutes located on the Tom River. Lying in deep Siberia, it is a two-day train ride from Moscow along the Trans-Siberian route . Average daytime temperatures hover around minus 15 degrees Celsius for this time of year, though the city has seen a recent warm spell that has come close to breaking the all-time February high of plus 7 degrees Celsius.