The 26 participants of the program had a month-long offline course of lectures and workshops organized by ITMO's Business incubator. They built business models, improved their ideas and created marketing plans, as well as had lessons on presenting projects and forming teams. As a result, each participant got a set of documents necessary for launching a startup: a presentation for investors, elevator pitch, teaser, business model and business plan.
Future Technologies START/GenerationS Demo Day
The 11 best teams presented their projects at the Demo Day. The jury was comprised of representatives of accelerators and technoparks, as well as business angels EvgenyTurvinenko and Alexei Semenov, Alexei Tolmachev, head of ITMO's venture fund, Anna Lun, representative of the Russian Venture Company, and many others. They assessed the projects based on the following criteria: competitive edge, the completeness of the business model, team's efficacy, the project's feasibility, and innovative nature. After the pitch-session, three projects were chosen: wireless RF transmission coils for MRT, Aquatic Saver and the S.P.B charger.
The project on the wireless RF coils was deemed best in all of the criteria. Its team developed a new technology that allowsenhancing the quality of the image and increasing the operating speed of MRIs at the same time. In the beginning of 2017, the developers plan to introduce the technology in one of Saint Petersburg’sprivate clinics.
Anton Oblitsov. Aquatic Saver
The Aquatic Saver is a special bracelet with an alarm that works underwater. As of now, a considerable amount of people drown every swimming season. This problem can be solved by introducing new technological solutions. Life-jackets are big and uncomfortable, so people often neglect such a measure. The Aquatic Saver is a bracelet that one can wear on an arm or neck — not only does it prevent one from drowning by inflating automatically, it also alarms others of the situation. The team already produced a prototype and is now testing it.
S.P.B. (Solar Power Bank) is a portable device made of a solar battery and an accumulator. The device converts solar power into electricity and stores it, which makes it a great help during expeditions, while fishing or wherever one does not have access to electricity. As opposed to most boost batteries, it does not rely on any power source save for solar power. The innovative feature of the project is using new technologies to create flexible solar panels.
Andrei Danilov. Solar Power Bank project
A portable charger is only one of the things the startup is going to develop. The team has many more solutions to offer in the future. For instance, by 2018 they are going to launch a project on fixing residential areas and important social facilities with solar panels.
The best projects were awarded free access to the electronic library of the Mann-Ivanov-Ferber publishing house. Next year, the semi-finalists of Future Technologies Start/GenerationS will work on developing prototypes. In March, 50 finalists from all over Russia will be chosen by the jury.
