At the end of June, Moscow State University’s (MSU) business incubator presented a new batch of startups at the second annual MSU Demo Day, which attracted more than 50 investors.
In addition to startups created by eight MSU alumni, six more startups from other incubators – those from ITMO in St. Petersburg and the Moscow School of Management in Skolkovo as well as Happy Farm from Kiev, Ukraine – were also on display.
A co-founder and partner of the business incubator, Kirill Klokov told East-West Digital News that, prior to the event, each of the eight startups present had received $12,000 to $15,000 in seed funding. These investments were made by Leta Capital, the venture arm of Russian IT security company Leta Group, and AltaIR, the investment vehicle of business angel Igor Ryabenkiy, in exchange for an up to 7% stake in the startups’ capital
The Demo Day startups represented a wide range of segments. Among the projects were two game developers — Bombermine (Matroid Games) and StarTowns. The former specializes in real-time multiplayer games for the web (their first game is based on old-school Bomberman arcade). The latter is an online game for web and mobile, which unfolds in the real world and allows players to explore distant cities and countries.
Zet Universe is a visual file explorer that groups files and folders into clusters, providing an intuitive way of working with them. Not only did this startup successfully participate in the MSU incubator, it also made it to the finals of the international startup contest MassChallenge.
Another project aimed at consumers is Trendo, a social mobile app that allows users to share impressions and opinions on media content like movies, books, video games, and music.
Focusing on medical problems, the startup iBinom offers a SaaS solution for the interpretation of genetic data.
The other projects are more business-oriented. POSFinance is a service for online and offline retailers that makes selling on credit faster and more simple. Opiner proposes an AI-based aggregator of product reviews aimed at e-commerce market players. For marketing specialists and events organizers there is Sponsy — a service that allows events to meet sponsors.
Pragmatic problems, big funding
Non-MSU startups that took part in the Demo Day were no less diverse and interesting than the “hosts”. The free mobile app Lonely Walls provides an easy way to purchase artwork for your home after checking how the piece would fit into the interior. Another “creative” service, Prixel specializes in high-quality 3D-printing of paintings that allows users to reconstruct every brush stroke.
For those who feel like spending evenings out, Clubture suggests music events and venues with a recommendation engine and a real-time photo flow from clubs.
The other three startups solve more pragmatic problems. Bunch produces Bluetooth tags to attach to gadgets, things, or even pets or people, to find them easily with a Bluetooth-enabled smartphone. Usarium is a mobile service for “P2P rent” of a variety of products, while CERA Marketing is aimed at offline retailers and collects statistics about visitors’ behavior using CCTV cameras.
The MSU business incubator was founded in 2010. Since then about 30 companies have been created by its alumni with their market capitalization totaling 500 million rubles ($15.3 million), the incubator stated in a press release. Seven out of twelve startups from last year’s Demo Day have been funded.
