On December 10th, the final event of an educational and entrepreneurship program, Demo Day at the SUSU Accelerator, was held at South Ural State University.
Over the course of 12 weeks, teams from different universities of the Chelyabinsk Region had been taking training, developing startup projects, analysing the market, calculating the economic model of implementation, and developing products’ MVP. At the start of the program 117 projects had been announced, 84 of them had reached the halfway mark, and 72 teams had made it to the semi-finals. For the final round, the Demo Day, 21 teams had been selected, whose projects had been recognized as the most promising ones.
“Today we are celebrating the finals of the Acceleration Program, which is being organized at our university for the fourth year now. This is more than just a project, it’s a whole movement. It helps students take their first steps in technology entrepreneurship and try their hand in generation of ideas. At the same time, this program has no limitations and students of all majors join us: from humanities and IT sciences to engineering majors. For them, our university becomes a starting point and creates all the necessary conditions. If a student has a need to create something new and a wish to start his/her own business, we provide mentors, experts and lecturers, who have already covered this path. We provide knowledge within the frameworks of the main educational programme, while the Accelerator helps reveal the potential and entrepreneurial competences of students,” noted the SUSU Vice-Rector for Education Marina Potapova.
The topics of projects are diverse and multi-faceted: from robotics and artificial intelligence to IT services, monitoring systems, “smart” urban solutions, and games. For instance, “Windows and Buildings Cleaning Robot”; “Smart System for Controlling Culture Solutions at City Farms”; “SmartControl, a Containers’ Fill-up Sensor”; “Drone-drome” (UAV autonomous landing complex); “Board Game for Couples”, and much more.
“Year after year, we see an increase both in the number of participants and in the number of successful cases. In just over three months, student participants cover the path from their ideas to functioning pilot models, which they are presenting at this exhibition today. Many of these developments have already reached the pilot stage, and industrial partners ready to test these products have been found as well,” shared Head of the Department of Economics and Finance of the SUSU School of Economics and Management Irina Solovyeva.
Among the finalists were participants from South Ural State University, SUSU Branch in Nizhnevartovsk, Nosov Magnitogorsk State Technical University (Magnitogorsk), South Ural State Medical University, Chelyabinsk State University and South Ural Technology University.
At the Demo Day, students presented their projects before a professional jury of experts: representatives of the government authorities of the Chelyabinsk Region, heads of enterprises from the real economy sector, as well as representatives of the Skolkovo Foundation (co-organizer and partner of the SUSU Accelerator).
“It is crucial for entrepreneurs to have their own attitude — without it, it would be next to impossible to build your own company. At the same time, you need to learn how to hear and perceive the feedback. The most valuable comments always come from the industry experts. It’s great that here you have managed to bring together the strongest projects and reputable jury capable of assessing those in terms of the market potential. Today, I have seen and heard many promising ideas. It’s important to understand that today’s Demo Day is not a final, but rather a starting point for all those who have chosen a difficult but results-yielding entrepreneurship path,” stressed Head of the Department of Regional Development at the Skolkovo Foundation Yuri Sibirskiy.
According to the results of the final day, all the finals teams were awarded letters of acknowledgment, and the 3 best teams received cash prizes for the development of their projects. Thus, the 3rd place and funding in the amount of 50,000 roubles were awarded to a project titled “Astasoft. Platform for Response to Incidents “Incident PRO””, the 2nd place and 70,000 roubles were awarded to “EchoAnalytica” project, and the main prize in the amount of 100,000 roubles was awarded to a project on the “Automated System for Control of Health and Safety Regulations Using Computer Vision”.
“My project is called the “Weapons and Firing Stance Recognition” and it uses computer vision. This task has been set by our customer, Chelyabinsk Forge-and-Press Plant (ChKPZ), jointly with our university. Last year I participated in the Accelerator on my own, just to try my hand in it. This year, we have decided to create a team in order to significantly improve our project, come up with a working pilot model and continue to develop it,” student of the SUSU School of Economics and Management Aleksandr Gamanov shared his experience of participation in the Accelerator.
The SUSU Accelerator is being implemented with the support from the “Science and Technology Initiatives Platform” Autonomous Nonprofit Organization under the “Technologies” federal project of the “Science and Universities” national project, and with the support from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation.