On the 8th of October about a thousand of professionals in IT-sphere, including not less than one hundred investors and business angels, as well as more than 400 representatives of IT startups came together on the site of the Skolkovo Hypercube. The reason for the meeting was the final event of the IT-track GenerationS acceleration program and the ending of the largest in Russia and Eastern Europe project competition in the sphere of Internet and mobile technologies - Web Ready investment forum.

The biggest acceleration platform in Russia is created in order to detect and promote the development of the best startups in the field of IT-, Internet- and modern mobile technologies, create the conditions for the negotiations and conclusions of deals between beginners in business and investors and promote the development of innovative entrepreneurship in Russia.

The ITMO University in the exhibition part of the forum was presented by Teledroid LLC that was established within the "Technological Entrepreneurship" master program in the QD business Incubator at the University. The company representatives, as well as many members of the forum, a few years ago started with a small startup, which later grew into an income-generating company.Successful young business people are engaged in the development of remote interaction systems based on robotic mechanisms. Thanks to such devices people will have an opportunity to be in places, where it is physically almost impossible.Robots are controlled via the Internet.As an example, at the booth of the university the delegation demonstrated NAO robot to the participants and forum visitors. Today this humanoid robot is actively used in the educational process of a large number of schools, universities and laboratories for teaching and research. And despite the fact that the staff of Teledroid LLC did not participate in the competitive part of the conference, their was an active interest for their developments from investors and representatives of various international companies.In particular, an informal meeting with representatives of the Intel Corporation took place, in which participants discussed the development trends of robotics in general and the possibility of its actual practical use for solving global problems.

"Today, most robots are used either for learning and social interaction, or just for fun",Kirill Aksenov says, Teledroid LLC technical director. "For example, robotic vacuum cleaners - they clean dust, but do not vacuum as conventional vacuum cleaners, robotic windows cleaners - they do not clean glass perfectly. That is, a person needs to do some extra work in any case. We talked about these issues with the Intel Corporation representatives and discussed the ways of expanding the scope of robots application".

One of the possible areas of partnership between Teledroid LLC and the Intel Corporation was also defined on the meeting - the creation of joined courses for the various level students in order to identify the existing problems and find solutions. Will this cooperation be productive? Time will tell.

During the five years of the contest existence, participants submitted about 3,500 applications, and 800 projects made their way to the final.Most of these startups managed to secure their further funding, and therefore successful existence. This year, from the 794 submitted applications, the jury selected 725 projects from 11 countries and 95 cities, but only 40 made their way to the GenerationS final. It was they who had the opportunity to fight for the victory in the major categories: Seed stage, Startup stage and Expansion Stage. Also, the contestants could expect to win additional nominations and cash prizes from partners and organizers: EMC Corporation, Skolkovo Innovation Center, Intel Corporation, "Telecom Idea" and Lenta.ru.

The Web Ready investment forum is long been recognized as one of the most ambitious acceleration sites in Russia and Eastern Europe. There are no losers, because participation itself in such a project is already a victory. During the forum, an exhibition was organized in which all projects delivered in the semi-finals, could demonstrate their solutions to the large companies and business representatives, application developers, Internet-shops directors, various publishing houses owners, logisticians, marketers, lawyers, HR-specialists and many others. And even if the project was not included in the list of winners, it is possible that it will be interesting to someone else, to someone who really needs it.

In general, in the opinion of all participants, such forums are needed, because they also teach startup beginners to communicate with investors, present the product effectively, to do the proper positioning of the project and lots more. And for the ITMO University, the participation in such large-scale acceleration programs is a chance to declare itself as an innovative university, that is actively developing the entrepreneurial direction.