This year Startup Sabantuy, a Kazan, Russia-based startup contest, went as far as Belgrade and Novi Sad (Serbia), Istanbul, and Dubai, in addition to a range of Russian cities, to find and support promising startup together with investors.
As witnessed by East-West Digital News, Serbian startups showed huge interest in this event. The fact that more than 70 teams had applied compelled the expedition to organize the event in two Serbian cities: Belgrade on May 23 and Novi Sad three days later. Thirty two projects in total were presented in the two cities after preliminary selection.
The Startup Sabantuy team was warmly welcomed by Serbian startups, which many experts believe need mentoring and education. The local startup ecosystem is still young, with venture capital coming mainly from abroad. One of the few local sources of funding are in the business accelerators in Bulgaria and Serbia, which support start-ups with grants from the European Union. In this context, Russian investors attracted special interest.
Entrepreneurs from Serbia – as well as from Croatia and Spain – thus presented their projects to Mikhail Kazartsev of IT Online Ventures, Evgeny Borisov and Eduard Adamian of KamaFlow as well as representatives of Runa Capital, Leta Capital and Starta Capital.
The Serbian winners were:
- Balkan Viator (1st place in Belgrade), a solution already widely used in Southeast Europe, which provides information on bus timetables, taxi services and ride-sharing;
- Drytools (1st place in Novi Sad), a software solution for web application makers;
- Tender5 (2nd place), an online marketplace for finding subcontractors;
- Naratio (2nd place), a developer of software for game and scenario makers.
“Startups in Serbia are not spoiled with money. There are many mature projects with a specific business model and first customers. The average age of founders is rather high – no less then 33-35 years, – which provides significant business experience and is a strong success factor,” said IT-Park director Anton Grachev.
Serbian startup entrepreneurs in Novi Sad. Photo credit: Startup Sabantuy
On June 6 Dubai hosted the last stage of the international expedition. In addition to startups from the UAE, entrepreneurs came from Egypt, Finland, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Spain to present their projects.
The winners were Paack, a Spanish startup whose mobile app allows online retailers to deliver orders “in just two hours,” and India’s Paaltao, a platform to sell handmade items with a potential audience of 35 million people, as reported by Tatar News.
More than 20 projects in total were selected during the expedition to participate in the Sabantuy CEO Camp, which took place in IT Park Naberezhniye Chelny on June 15.
Launched in 2012 by IT-Park, a major technopark in Kazan, with the support of Russian fund of funds RVC, the expedition initially focused on cities of Russia and the former Soviet Union. More than 1,300 projects took part in the expeditions of 2012, 2013 and 2014 with 8 projects receiving some $3 million in venture investment.
