In late August, the Moscow Innovation Development Center (IDC), an agency established last year by the Moscow government to foster high tech sectors in the capital, launched its first incubator, christened “API Moscow.”
Located in Digital October, a major tech event venue in Moscow’s center, the incubator already hosts no fewer than 30 startups, providing them with infrastructure and educational services, as well as mentoring sessions and other activities.
Among these startups are Planner5d, Kula, Getsy, People.CC, Car-Fin.ru, Appiny, GdeSlon and Black Cat.
The city authorities finance office rental, utility, and other related costs but neither invest in startups, nor intervene in their selection or management, which IDC’s General Manager Konstantin Fokin called “perhaps the least interventionist government-backed support program in the world.”
Four Russian investment companies – Igor Ryabenkiy’s Altair Capital, Igor Matsanyuk’s Atsani, Pavel Cherkashin’s Vestor.in, and GlobalTechInnovations – have received a special “accreditation” which enables them to select startups and place them in the incubator.
However, the incubator remains “absolutely open” to new investors, including foreign ones, IDC’s Communications Manager Vadim Bilyk told East-West Digital News. “If they want to enter the Russian market, they are welcome!”
The incubator is presented as the first part of a municipal program that aims to foster the emergence of “several hundred innovative companies.”
Among IDC’s other programs is the “Moscow Innovation Partnership,” which provides tools and services to support innovative projects at each stage of their life cycle in association with major players of the capital’s innovation scene.
IDC has also launched “innovative prototyping centers” where students, schoolchildren, and young businessmen can transform their innovative ideas into prototypes using the most modern digital equipment. Five such centers have been opened to date in the capital with plans to open 20 more by the end of the year, according to Bilyk.
IDC, however, has no ties to the Moscow Seed Fund, a municipal venture fund that has invested in a number of startups over the past few years.
