The Skolkovo Foundation and its resident startups signed a raft of agreements with major commercial companies during the annual Skolkovo Startup Village on June 6-7.
On the first day of the outdoor event for tech entrepreneurs and investors from around the world, the foundation signed a cooperation and partnership agreement with Russia’s Tinkoff Bank, the world’s biggest online bank. Under the agreement, Tinkoff Bank – which has already adopted technology designed by Skolkovo resident startups – will set up a centre at Skolkovo for developing big data, cloud and security technology.
Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg (right) shakes hands with Tinkoff Bank founder Oleg Tinkov. Photo: Sk.ru.
The next day, the electricity and heat generating company T Plus Group and IT Plus, LLC signed a partnership agreement with the foundation under which T Plus Group will open a partner centre at the innovations city: a special branch of IT Plus. The centre will focus on designing systems for assessing the state of equipment and for lean production, as well as the digitalization of documentation and developing corporate IT systems. The company will invest more than 260 million rubles ($4.6 million) in the centre during the next three years.
Under another cooperation agreement signed between the Skolkovo Foundation and MTS, the mobile operator will launch a programme for attracting Russian IT programmers to develop and create products and services for MTS.
Other agreements were signed between individual companies that have residency status within the Skolkovo Foundation. Qrator Labs, a resident of Skolkovo’s IT cluster that develops systems for protection against DDoS attacks, signed a cooperation agreement with national telecoms operator Rostelecom on information security. Koshelok (CardsMobile), the maker of a mobile app that stores users’ bank, transport and loyalty cards in one electronic wallet, signed a cooperation agreement with the O’KEY hypermarket chain.
Other agreements were signed at the grand opening of Startup Village, which this year was attended by more than 15,000 people from 80 different countries.