SLUSH-2015 Made Russian Startups Closer to the European Market

The largest European startup conference SLUSH-2015 came to the end. ITMO University`s startupers met with potential investors and partners. Rehabot project placed 1st in a contest initiated by Finnish accelerator NewCo Helsinki.

Among visitors there were about 800 investors who came to see 1, 700 startups from 100 countries. ITMO University was represented by five teams that took part in a project stand exhibition. ITMO University, one of “SkolTech” and 5-100 project`s participants, was the only Russian university, which presented its projects.

Leaders of “Video 360 Production,” “ColorIT” and “Chemlab” Projects as well as “Rehabot” and “Aquamagnetix`s” developers who previously became the best participants of Future Technologies` session met with investors. According to Galina Odintsova, head of “ColorIT,” all SLUSH`s participants have an opportunity to make an appointment with any company using a special service developed by SLUSH`s organizers.

“We negotiated with representatives of such large companies as Samsung Electronics and Huawei. Apart from that we demonstrated our development to venture fund “Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH”,” shared Ms. Odintsova.

“Video 360 Production,” attracted lots of visitors. As Denis Stolyarov, Design and Multimedia Center`s engineer and one of “Video360” inventors, noted SLUSH-2015 brought them some unexpected discoveries.

“Preparing for participation in SLUSH we were sure that there would be a lot of projects that make movies using “video360” technology, which becomes more and more popular nowadays. But in fact we met only two companies such as “Finwe” from Finland and “Color” from France. Both of them are large and famous,” said the expert.

Russian participants didn`t take part in the main startup competition for the most promising projects. However five ITMO University`s startups will take part in the next session of large startup accelerator NewCo Helsinki. According to Finnish experts, Rehabot was the best one.

“Rehabot was awarded with free registration of juridical person in Finland,” said Olesya Baranyuk, deputy director of “ITMO University Technopark. “Timo Onnela, Enterprise Helsinki`s CEO, appreciated Rehabot noting that they became the best because of aspiration for development. They really wanted their project to meet European requirements.”

Vadim Kotenev, chief marketing officer of Rehabot, said that their team had made contacts with investors from eight countries, Samsung`s Innovation Department and Finnish commercial mission.

CareMonkey, a startup from Australia, placed 1^st in the main contest. Participants developed a risk management system, which saved relevant medical data and made them acceptable for mobile apps.