JSC Belagroprombank has supported small and medium-sized business of Belarus

JSC Belagroprombank has been the general partner of the Startup Weekend business forum for the third time. The business forum was held on May, 14 in the conference room of Partizansky city area. What to wait from small and medium-sized business in Belarus and who became the winner of the competition you can learn from the information below.

This is not the first time the Bank has taken part in such the event. In October, 2015 the competition of business projects Invest Weekend was organized on the premises of Belagroprombank’s Head office, and in December, 2015 Belagroprombank was the general partner of the competition finals “Startup of the year – 2015”.

This time more than 300 people joined the business ground. Presentations of competitors’ startup projects in such areas as Mobile App, HardWare and Game & Internet; presentations by experts from the IT-sphere, mentoring sessions were presented to private investors, representatives of investment funds, banks, corporations, shopping chains and state authorities.

The representatives of JSC Belagroprombank: Head of Small and Medium-sized Business Department Viktoria Bairan (in the middle) and the lead specialist of the Department Viktoria Kozovskaya (on the left), Chief economist of Client Management Department of Corporate Business Department Olga Komar (on the right)

- Support of representatives of business has for many years been the basis of the development strategy, – shares her opinion Head of Small and Medium-sized Business Department of JSC Belagroprombank Viktoria Bairan. – Business is the driving force of any country’s economy. And Belarus is not an exception. That is why it is very essential for us to support such projects, as Startup Weekend, and help young entrepreneurs to enter the national and international markets.

Founder of Startup Weekend, Managing Director of “Startup technologies” Ltd., Founder of the Marketing Agency Elab media, business-angel Alexey Shablovskiy

It is interesting that this time the selection criteria for the startup projects have been tougher.

- We, being the founders of the event, together with the invited experts several days before the Startup Weekend started to organize mentoring sessions for the competitors to have an opportunity to refine their projects and eventually to obtain an opportunity to present their projects to investors, – says Managing Director of “Startup technologies” Ltd., Founder of the Marketing Agency Elab media, business-angel Alexey Shablovskiy. – 90 applications were submitted. Only 35 of them were accepted. Part of business ideas that did not manage to come into the final, had a social character and did not correspond to the interests of investors.

The jury revealed the winners by voting

According to the rules of Startup Weekend, the jury that determines the winners of the competition consists of only experienced specialists from the business sphere. This time the number of judges included more than 14 people. Head of Small and Medium-sized Business Department Viktoria Bairan, Founder of Sky Incom, SibCapital, Aericom, partner of the investment company Berkshire Establishment LLP (UK) Yuriy Seliverstorov, Director of the shopping chain for household appliances and electronics “TECHNO Plus”, Director of the private enterprise “Usi-life”, Founder and Director of the Business Development Centre FMR Naum Kats, the certified business consultant in the sphere of internet marketing and IT Sergei Zhukovsky, Founder and CEO of printing and publishing house “Druk-S” Sergei Tatarchuk and others were among them.

- The jury assessed the competitors upon three criteria: innovativeness, commercial attractiveness and scalability, – explains Viktoria Bairan. – As a result of presentations three winners were determined in each of three sections: Mobile App, HardWare and Game & Internet. We liked the idea of Andrei Veselov very much. He had developed the project called “Script-design” – this program helps to design scripts of phone calls, by using which operators can talk without special training. The program targets the banking system, insurance companies, and other companies which use call centers in their work. “Script-design” definitely has the future, and, perhaps, it will be applied in the Belarusian market in the nearest future.

Unfortunately, not all the projects were presented because of lack of time. Only 22 presentations were presented to the jury. According to the results of the jury’s voting, the following business ideas were considered the best ones:

Grand-prix

A device for detecting the early stages of lung disease. Within the framework of his own dissertation research Valentin Yarmolinskiy has created an impedance lung plethysmograph РПГ2-05. The device provides a separate and local (regional) research of ventilation and pulmonary blood flow, which is important for detecting the early stages of lung disease. The device was awarded a diploma by VDNKh, BSSR in 1989.

Grand-prix owner Valentin Yarmolinskiy (on the left)

- Startup weekend is a unique ground for Belarus that allows presenting your ideas, - says Valentin Ivanovich. – I hope that today all the winners will find investors (perhaps, here) and will be able to realize their projects.

1st place

• Joiny – a free mobile app that allows searching for like-minded people to visit events together and to create your own events. Owner: Matvei Gramovich.
• "Script-design". Owner: Andrei Veselov.
• Rocketbody – a mobile app that can become your personal coach, doctor and dietarian. The program calculates a human diet, appoints a workout plan, analyzes a training load, decipher an electrocardiogram and a period of supercompensation.

The uniqueness: the app can do an electrocardiogram. Owner: Timofei Lipskiy.

Timofei Lipskiy (on the left) has presented a mobile app Rocketbody

2nd place

• ExchangeKarma.org – a social playing platform that helps cafes and shops to boost sales. Owner: Sergei Zaharov.
• Antifriction bushings of deformed iron. Owner: Arthur Pokrovskiy.
• Quickly readjusted stamping technology for components produced in small batches. Owner: Arthur Pokrovskiy.

The experts noted two projects presented by Arthur Pokrovskiy (on the left)

3rd place

• LiderGo – an online business game, economic simulator and equipment for personal growth created by Alexey Zacharov.
• Wanna fight – a mobile app that creates a phone owner’s counterpart based on his picture, anthropometric parameters (height, weight), indicators of muscle strength (number of pull-ups on the bar), shot speed (measured using the accelerometer built into the phone). After a counterpart is ready, it can fight with a virtual counterpart of a friend, neighbor or person in the Internet. Owner: Andrei Mogolen.
• "3D Mirror" – interactive selling screens in the form of a penguin that are able to expand the purchase funnel. 3D Mirrors collect the statistics of human behavior; analyze employees’ work, etc. Owner: Nikita Zabolotskiy.

All the winners of the competition of the projects Startup Weekend got valuable presents from organizers and partners. The presents included a laptop (the owner of grand-prix), tablets and certificates for attendance of various courses and services.

One of the most successful finalists of Startup weekend Alexandr Zolotorev

A large number of entrepreneurs were raised during the existence of the business platform. Alexandr Zolotorev, the co-founder of the mapping service Maps.me, winner in the nomination “The most innovative project” in 2011, became the most successful finalist of Startup weekend. At present the project belongs to Mail.ru Group – the company bought the mobile app from developers in 2014 for several mln dollars. Nowadays more than 40 mln travelers from all over the world appreciated ease of the app.

- Our team has been trying to achieve success for 5 years, - says about his way in the IT-sphere Alexandr Zolotorev. – That is why, by addressing all the startuppers, I want to wish them not to give up, correct their mistakes, improve their businesses, search for new ideas, present the ideas to investors and only move forward.

There was music during the coffee breaks and the host of the event raffled presents from the partners of Startup weekend among the guests

At the end of the event, when all the winners had been chosen, all the guests were addressed by the owner of the business platform Alexey Shablovskiy:

- We would like to express our words of gratitude to JSC Belagroprombank, the general partner of Startup weekend, for the assistance in organizing and conducting the event. Thanks to the Bank’s participation, the business forum was visited by a huge number of eminent figures of the business environment. We hope that we will continue our cooperation and mutually will develop small and medium-sized business in Belarus, providing an opportunity to the new representatives of the business sector to implement their ideas.