The second foray outside the confines of Russia begins Tuesday for the Startup Tour, which visits the Belarusian capital of Minsk in its quest to uncover and develop the top startups in the CIS.
The National Library of Belarus in Minsk, venue for the 10th stage of the Startup Tour. Photo: Flickr.com
The tour, in its first four years a solely domestic affair, went international in 2015 by visiting the Kazakh city of Almaty last month.
Now Eastern Europe’s biggest innovations roadshow rolls into Minsk, which holds formidable high-tech potential, particularly in the information technologies market.
“Belarus is a major IT player,” said Skolkovo Technopark director Renat Batyrov in a recent interview to sk.ru.
“They have a big company that does outsourcing around the entire world. They have clients all over the world. They have companies like EPAM, Wargaming, and so on. These are companies that are known the world over,” he added.
The high-level Skolkovo delegation is led by Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who is a member of the Skolkovo Foundation’s board of trustees.
Skolkovo strategy director Ekaterina Inozemtseva told sk.ru that the tour this year is discovering better quality startups than in previous years.
“They are more professional, the presentations are better, the ideas are better. There is more science in the projects, they are really great,” she said.
“I really hope we have just as much success in Belarus.”
Minsk is the tenth stop on the Startup Tour, which culminates in Startup Village at the Skolkovo Innovation Center on June 2-3. The most promising startups encountered along the tour route are invited to take part in the pitch sessions at Startup Village, where investment and possible residency are on offer to the winners.
The Minsk stage is being held at the National Library of Belarus with the support of the government’s State Committee for Science and Technology.
The event’s organizational partners are the Minsk City Technopark, Laboratory of Intellect and the Belarusian Fund for Innovation.
Forty-three companies from Minsk and the surrounding areas will be pitching their innovations to a panel of experts from the Skolkovo ecosystem in five categories: Innovations for children, IT, biomed, industrial technology, and energy-efficient technology.
Kazakhstan and Belarus appear to be just the start of the Startup Tour’s foreign expansion: Dvorkovich said last month that Armenia and Kyrgyzstan could be included next year, while Latin America has also been mooted as a possible destination.