Structure of ITMO Accelerator

Applications to Accelerator open twice a year to ITMO students and staff, as well as other projects and teams. Over the course of three months, participants attend lectures on business strategies and marketing, take part in workshops, as well as communicate with trackers and potential clients. After this time, they present their results at Demo Day attended by entrepreneurs, investors, and experts, including representatives of Uralsib bank, Yandex Practicum, MTS Startup Hub, and Kama Flow venture fund. In total, the Accelerator collaborates with over 25 industrial partners and 20 venture funds, among which are supermarkets Lenta and VkusVill, Gazprom Neft, MTS, Yandex Cloud Boost, the Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan, and others.

Over 140 startups participate in the program annually. 

“Many of our partners call ITMO Accelerator a startup factory – and it’s an important description: unfortunately, recently all the major pitch events in the country are attended by the same projects. We solved this problem: 2-3 times a year we release new startups onto the market,” shared Olesya Baraniuk, deputy head of ITMO Technopark. 

In order to achieve such results, ITMO Accelerator starts working with projects when they are only ideas, helping aspiring entrepreneurs assemble a team and reach an MVP (prototype) or initial sales within three months. Trackers conduct weekly workshops and seminars focused on various aspects of launching a startup, including product development, marketing, sales, and finding investors. Participants also gain access to office spaces, equipment, software, and other resources of ITMO Technopark.

One such zero-to-hero story from this season of Accelerator is the team of ProBuddy, who developed software for automatic image marking that can mark data in a short time without losing image quality. Currently, the team is testing their solution at the company IREX, where it’s used to detect people in images.

“I saw an announcement for ITMO Accelerator in one of the startuper chats I am part of. I had an idea for a project, so I decided to apply. At the Accelerator, I went the path from my idea to the first MVP. Here, I segmented my target audience, identified a focus group, came up with hypotheses for a custdev and ran it among 48 respondents. Having proved my hypotheses, I assembled a focus group for testing. Next, I am planning to make the second MVP, launch sales, and reach payback in four months,” shared ProBuddy co-founder Svetlana Rimsh.

ITMO Accelerator also helps participants attract investments. One of the most popular programs to support student entrepreneurship is Student Startup, implemented by the Foundation for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises as part of the federal project Platform for Student Technological Entrepreneurship. Through this program, 55 ITMO students received 1 million rubles each this year to develop their startup. To best meet the competition requirements, ITMO Accelerator helps students bring their idea to a prototype, calculate the economics, and present their projects.

Read also:

55 ITMO Students Win 1 Million Rubles Each for Their Startups

Increased project viability

After completing the acceleration program at ITMO, startup teams can choose to enter corporate accelerators. For instance, currently ITMO collaborates with the Startup Lab foundation, the Agama.run incubator, and the Startup Drive accelerator – all of whom are keen on welcoming startups from ITMO Accelerator.

“Student accelerators provide access to new ideas and technologies at an early stage and contribute to innovation development. That’s why we at Startup Drive are interested in attracting startups from ITMO Accelerator. At Startup Drive, we launch pilot projects and help teams find their first clients. Our participants can access the company’s resources and expertise, including in terms of technologies, data, and clients,” shared Maksim Onishchenko, the head of Startup Drive, the accelerator by Gazprom Neft.

According to Olesya Baraniuk, by participating in corporate accelerators, startups increase their viability. Based on the results of the recent survey of ITMO Accelerator graduates in 2021-2023, 70% of their projects are still functioning. 

ITMO Accelerator’s latest season

This season, out of 450 applications to the Accelerator, 56 projects made the cut. 19 of them were presented at the recent Demo Day in front of a jury featuring investors and representatives of Russia’s tech giants, including some new faces: MTS Startup Hub, HIVE (Beeline), and the Kama Flow venture fund.

Three startups were named winners. They received money for consulting services (for instance, a consultation on business model calculation, product presentation, and making a presentation for investors) from ITMO University’s Technology Transfer Center.

The first place went to Predictive Sensorics, an AI-based predictive diagnostics system for lubricant parameters. The system synchronizes with the service maintenance database and promptly informs the owner about the condition of the lubricants. For three months, the winning startup team will be able to stay free of charge at the Startup Attic, an office of the ITMO Technopark for students with a coworking space and meeting rooms.

Xenia.AI, an AI voice assistance for automated interviews, landed in the second place. The software generates questions for candidates, conducts interviews, and evaluates candidate responses; thanks to this, all the recruiters are left to do is choose a candidate from the list of best performers.

And the third place went to Umap, a digital navigation service for exhibitions, forums, festivals, and universities, that also includes other event organization technologies.

Other participants of the acceleration program also received special awards from ITMO Accelerator. Teamcheck, a next-gen service for remote team management, secured a 400,000-ruble grant from Yandex Cloud Boost, while the teams of Umap, Xenia.AI, Teamcheck, and Expert HR won 50,000 rubles each from MTS StartUp Hub for ad services at the platform MTS Marketolog (marketing consultant).

“We at ITMO Accelerator are proud of the opportunity to support young entrepreneurs at all stages of their projects’ development. Our program is meant to help them not only polish their existing ideas, but also bring to life some entirely new ones. We offer our participants not just access to resources and infrastructure, but also support of our mentors and assistance in assembling teams. The best projects receive significant awards upon “graduation,” which is a powerful boost for their development. We are certain that together we can create the environment for the growth of new tech leaders and innovations,” shared head of ITMO Accelerator Alexey Solomatin.