SPIEF Hosts an AI Startup Contest For the First Time
On 6–7 June, the East Bound open international AI innovation contest was held at the Innovation Space as part of Roscongress Foundation's Building Trust space. It was organised by the Roscongress Foundation, VEB Ventures (formerly VEB Innovations) and the Skolkovo Foundation.
The contest received 130 applications from which the organisers selected 12 projects that were given the opportunity to make a short pitch to representatives of leading investment funds, technology companies and business incubators in China and other Asian countries.
The investors who took part in the pitch sessions possess a capital from USD 100 million to 1 billion. The national jury of the contest included representatives of ChinaEquity Group, China Mobile Hong Kong, SREI Infrastructure Finance, Pue Shanghai Innovation Incubator Management, BitRise Capital, Vinci, Innoway, Mininglamp Group, Sistema Asia Capital, vCargoCloudPte, TealDANCE and the Russian-Singapore Business Council.
The contest programme was organised on a geographical basis. On the first day, five projects were presented to representatives of the Chinese investment community. On the second day, other projects were pitched to investors from other Asian countries.
Before the pitch sessions kicked off, Alexander Stuglev, CEO, Roscongress Foundation drew attention to the fact that the East Bound Russian startup contest was being held at SPIEF for the first time. “The best artificial intelligence projects from all over the country will be presented today at the Innovation Space. I am confident that in the near future these technologies will be used throughout the world, and our contest will be the catalyst for this. I would like to thank our partners, the Skolkovo Foundation and VEB Ventures, with whom we have brought together the best minds,” said Alexander Stuglev.
“We are pleased to host the East Bound startup contest. I am sure this will be a fascinating experience for young Russian companies – to pitch their projects to investors from the Asia-Pacific region. Although on each of day of the contest only two projects can be selected by the jury members, I am sure that there will be no losers here. All the projects were carefully selected and have already proved that they are competitive in the global market,” said Oleg Teplov, CEO, VEB Ventures.
“I am certain that all the participants have reached a very high level, so the contest will be tough and very competitive,” said Arkady Dvorkovich, Chair, the Skolkovo Foundation. “But that’s the point: to be better, to be faster than the others. I wish you all good luck. The Skolkovo Foundation is ready and willing to support everyone whose team can prove that they have the commitment and standout ideas, and our partners, investors and innovators are ready to guide you through the entire development and commercialisation process. So, let's do it together! We want to make money together, we want to do business together and make it a success! And for sure we can achieve our mutual goals!”
The VisionLabs (integrated face and object recognition solutions and products) and Dbrain (business process optimisation using AI technologies) projects won the ‘Chinese’ day. On the second day, investors chose the Sarex (SaaS solution for managing construction projects) and SODIS Lab (construction monitoring system) projects. The total investment awarded to the winning projects has not been disclosed.
The BestPlace, Learn2Play, BestFitMe, Intellogic, Mallenom Systems, Conundrum, Cybertronic and Mobile Video Solutions projects also took part in the contest.
