By Andrei Skvarsky.
Russia’s biggest lender Sberbank and San Francisco-based venture capital firm 500 Startups have finished the second seed accelerator in a joint programme for Russian technology start-ups.
Sberbank invests in companies that take part in the programme.
It pledged to put 6m roubles ($97,000) into each of 14 start-ups that were involved in the eight-week second accelerator, which took place in Moscow from October to December 2019.
Eight of the 14 companies that were selected during the demo day in Moscow as the most promising ones was to receive an extra 4m roubles ($64,500) from Sberbank.
Each of the eight was also offered a Sberbank-arranged opportunity to receive customised training at a Russian company or take a course in Luxembourg to study European experience.
The 14 participant companies have developed technologies for a variety of services, including courses available through a mobile app, brand reputation management, the remote signing of electronic documents, the creation of virtual influencers, and fast-track job skills training.
During the accelerator, which was run in English, the participant start-ups signed about 150 contracts, tested out more than 200 hypotheses and had nearly 800 meetings with Russian and foreign companies and investment funds.
The participant companies had an average twofold rise in revenues during the accelerator.
Those of them that were business-to-consumer (B2C) firms recorded an average 110 per cent increase in numbers of monthly active users (MAU) – per-month numbers of unique visitors to their websites.
The final assessments during the demo day were made by a board that represented large companies and included Sberbank CEO Herman Gref and 500 Startups CEO, managing partner and co-founder Christine Tsai.
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