Fourth wave entrepreneurs completed training within the scope of the Sber500 international accelerator program. 25 startup teams became finalists. The president of Sberbank German Gref, who opened the demo day that completed the acceleration program, emphasized that they passed the most difficult selection because 50 teams applied for each place.
1,250 technology startups from 36 countries applied to participate in the fourth wave. Start-ups from the USA and China, Germany and the Netherlands, Israel and Singapore, India and the UAE, Argentina and Costa Rica, even South Sudan and Syria have shown interest in the Russian accelerator.
At the event, where 150 teams completed the two-week online intensive training, the best 25 teams from Russia, India and Turkey participated in the main accelerator program and had the opportunity to present their products to investors on the demo day.
The finalists were selected by Sberbank and representatives of more than 30 major technology companies and investment funds from among accelerator partners. At the Sber500 demo, for the first time, startup founders had the opportunity to present their solutions on stage to real investors and company executives, with whom they could instantly agree on cooperation.
“Technological entrepreneurship is one of the strengths of our country,” said German Gref. — This session, including our accelerator, is proof of Russia’s technological prowess. “Russia has always been strong in talent, and here, like nowhere else, you can feel the power of the intelligence, the power of passion of men burning with their ideas.”
As Gref emphasized, startups are always about the future, and the demo day in the form of a technology show was a clear example of this. Finalists presented their solutions in an “elevator pitch” format, where you must capture an investor’s attention literally on the go in a minute and a half to two minutes. To do this, using augmented reality (XR) technologies, virtual places were created where a startup proposal was signed on a napkin in a cafe (napkin field), where the driver-founder presented the venture to the passenger investor (taxi field). ), the founder introduces the startup to investors in the lounge-airport area.