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.
