Russian Tech Tour took place on April 24, 2013 on two premises in Moscow, one of them being “Hypercube” on the territory of Skolkovo Innovation Centre. Today, on April 25, the tour arrived in Kazan. The foundation’s startups successfully presented themselves to venture investors, TechTour will help them build long-term confident relations with investors – such is the opinion of the Foundation.
Tech Tour is traditionally conducted in the format of an international event for startups offering the possibility for venture investors to get acquainted with their projects during pitch-sessions. Russian Tech Tour is conducted for the third time in our country. Its organizer is the European Tech Tour Association. In Russia Tech Tour is supported by key development institutions, including Skolkovo Foundation, “RBK” and “Rosnano”, “Moscow Innovation Center” and a number of other organizations. Executive Director of the IT cluster Igor Bogachev stressed that Tech Tour was an important strategic instrument of building long-term relations with international investment community.
Participants of Russian Tech Tour in Moscow (photo by techtour.com)
“For our startups Tech Tour is the possibility to show the level of Russian projects and products and have direct contact with representatives of foreign venture funds. For projects this is also a possibility to get feedback and a potential to find future partners and mentors which for many is even more important than investments as such”, said Igor Bogachev
Half of the finalists of the Russian Tech Tour 2013 are residents of the Skolkovo Foundation. Among them are the following companies and projects:
“Cooperation of Skolkovo IT Cluster with Tech Tour is mutually beneficial and we will develop it in the future. All 25 selected participants have received prizes for participation in the final. Among the companies presented in Hypercube, LinguaLeo, Penxi, Mobix Chip projects found the biggest interest with the investors.”
фото Екатерины Гайки
Yekaterina Gayka, IT cluster deputy director for education and research, who participated in Tech Tour events in Kazan today, highlighted the considerably high level of participation of venture companies, among them the famous Silicon Valley Bank (Andy Tsao); Donald Dixon, senior managing director of Trident Capital; Alexander Galitskiy, head of “Almaz Capital Partners”; Aynur Aydeldinov, director for investments of “Venture Foundation of Tatarstan”; Sven Lingjaerde, Tech Tour President; Alexandra Johnson, VTB Aurora; other venture investors.
According to Yekaterina Gayka (top photo from her Twitter account, made by Yekaterina at Tech Tour in Hypercube), similar to Skolkovo, in Kazan, where IT startups are supported on a very high level (the event was attended by the President of the Republic of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov), investors saw one of the most attractive centers for venture business in Russia.
“Such events are great investments in establishing good relationships with the investment community”, said Yekaterina Gayka.
It is an impressive event, the obvious distinctive feature of which is high level of presented projects. We wouldn’t like to single out several companies because all of them (all!) have really presented impressive technological products, big achievements in promotion of their products and realistic and at the same time large-scale plans of their further work. We are undoubtedly proud of the fact that after months-long selection process among hundreds of applications the independent selection committee decided that 14 companies – participants of Skolkovo – are worthy of being among 25 finalists,said Eduard Kanalosh, director for investments of the Skolkovo Foundation
Pyotr Lukyanov, director at the investment department, also marked that similar to the previous two times, IT startups traditionally dominated the third Russian Tech Tour, which corresponds to the reality of the Russian venture market. At the same time, emergence of companies in the energy efficiency sector is significant. In particular, in the frameworks of the third Tech Tour, 4 Skolkovo companies involved in this sector are among the best 25 startups: Mobix, SMS Tenzotherm, RRT Global and VIST Mining.