Illustrating the growing interest of domestic and international corporations in tech innovation, AccorHotels will hold a hackathon in Moscow on April 23-24. To organize the event, the global hospitality group has teamed up with international startup accelerator NUMA Moscow and Microsoft.
Participants will work in cross-functional teams of minimum three: one developer, one designer and one entrepreneur. They will be able to meet with and receive feedback from AccorHotels executives, NUMA entrepreneurs and Microsoft tech experts.
The organizers have also invited “renowned experts in the fields of prototyping, design, mobile applications and venture investment” to assist the teams.
“AccorHotels ramps up its digital drive with a series of initiatives launched in the end of 2014. We are happy to become a part of the group’s global digital transformation. We hope this hackathon will not only bring talented teams together, but also provide AccorHotels and the whole hospitality industry with innovative solutions”, said Alexis Delaroff, Chief Operating Officer of AccorHotels Russia, Georgia & CIS.
In-house experts and external thinkers
The hackathon will provide its participants with an opportunity to further develop their projects. The winning teams will fly to Paris to meet AccorHotels top executives and pitch their solutions to a panel of selected in-house experts. They will also be provided with a special one-month acceleration program at NUMA to prepare for the final pitch to AccorHotels. Further on Microsoft will offer the teams a free access to BizSpark for three years.
“This format is quite common in Europe as it is a very cost-effective way for companies to generate new ideas with the help of external thinkers. It’s a total win-win situation with the corporation ending up with a handful of new realistic ideas and the teams getting the opportunity to complete and sell their work,” explains Yannick Tranchier, co-founder of NUMA Moscow.
A few months ago Ikea Russia launched an in-house startup accelerator — the first of its kind in the country — to “search and realize innovative ideas for an enhanced customer experience.”
Meanwhile, a range of Russian corporations — including mobile operator MTS, hydroelectricity firm RusHydro, construction group Morton, national savings bank Sberbank, and others — have associated themselves to GenerationS This corporate accelerator was launched in 2014 by the state-owned fund of funds RVC.
- For more information about the AccorHotels hackathon, please visit the event’s website.
