In late April the finale of GenerationS, a major corporate-oriented accelerator program, took place at the Stadium Live concert hall in Moscow. Three winners shared 15 million rubles (some $263,000 at the current exchange rate) in prizes while 19 other teams received prizes worth over 100 million rubles (1.75 million) from the accelerator’s partners.
One of them, Raiffeisenbank, awarded three Russian startups. The winner of the bank’s award is Oz Photo Expert, a technology developed by Moscow-based Media Forensic Software to authenticate digital photographies and provide biometric identification.
Awarded with 1 million rubles (almost $18,000), the team intends to test its technology in cooperation with Raiffeisenbank within a few months.
Oz Photo Expert was among the winners of a previous fintech startup contest organized last year by GenerationS.
“[Our platform may] hedge risks in a variety of banking processes. What’s more, it provides return on investment right from the start,” claims the startup’s founder Artem Gerasimov.
Eco Banking System, which tracks the financial situation of a bank’s customers and predicts their behavior, came second, while Thewaay, a personal lifestyle assistant for bank-client communications, came third.
Raiffeisenbank will carry out a three-month pilot project with each of the finalists. Thus the entrepreneurs will be able to verify their ideas and, if proved relevant, have their services integrated to the bank’s operations.
“We are glad that this first cooperation has been so productive. We believe that startup know-how combined with [Raiffeisenbank’s] corporate resources will generate ground-breaking solutions for the fintech market,” said Gulnara Bikkulova, a top RVC executive who oversees the GenerationS project.
“Thanks to our participation in GenerationS, we have discovered a much wider range of opportunities. What’s more, we have met young and talented teams whose innovative solutions may help us build our business more efficiently in the future,”said Oleg Tretyak, Head of IT architecture at AO Raiffeisenbank, the Russian subsidiary of the Austrian bank.
GenerationS was launched in 2013 by RVC, a state-own fund of funds and a key player of the Russian innovation ecosystem, to develop connections between startups and corporations.
With up to 15 million rubles (around $266,000 at the current exchange rate) in prizes, the initiative attracted as many as 4,237 teams from 30 countries last year. Another 100 million rubles (almost $1.8 million) was offered by corporate partners.
