The Skolkovo Foundation is hunting for the country’s best innovative IT projects via the GoTech competition, and plans to reward them with up to 5 million rubles ($79,000), mentoring and expert advice from the foundation’s IT cluster.
Skolkovo’s category for the top innovative IT projects within the competition aims to identify companies that offer a product or service that has a technological advantage over its competitors and potential for commercialization, particularly on international markets.
The Skolkovo Foundation is looking for innovative IT projects to join its IT cluster. Photo: Pexels.com.
“More than 300 residents of the IT cluster who came to us three or four years ago have already entered the market and are successfully promoting their products, with 90 of them seeing success internationally,” said Igor Bogachev, head of the IT cluster and a member of the supervisory board of the GoTech competition.
“We believe that within GoTech we can find more national champions who will subsequently grow into world champions.”
Skolkovo has for five years partnered the GoTech competition for tech businesses, which was previously known as Web&Tech Ready, awarding grants to its winners once they became residents of the foundation.
“During our cooperation [with the competition], 15 companies have become residents of the Skolkovo Foundation and eight companies received financing grants,” said Vasily Ryzhonkov, head of Skolkovo’s mobile tech centre, part of the foundation’s IT cluster.
“We are on the lookout for promising tech projects and are developing all the new instruments of support such as entrance to international markets and acceleration programmes,” he said.
The three winners in the most innovative IT project category will receive grants from the Skolkovo Foundation of 3 million, 4 million and 5 million rubles, respectively.
Companies can register to take part in the GoTech competition on its website until September 11. Semifinalists will be selected by the competition’s experts by September 23, and the winners will be announced at the GoToMarket forum on October 6, following pitching sessions.
Other categories within GoTech include security giant Kaspersky Lab’s Next Generation Security nomination, and others organised by Google, Intel and EMC.
About 4,500 projects from 40 countries have taken part in the competition since it was founded in 2009, with 50 competing companies going on to attract more than 1.5 billion rubles ($24 million) in investment.