Earlier this month, illustrating the emergence of a whole new tech industry in the country, the Russian central bank rewarded some of the most remarkable fintech startups.
The contest took place in the framework of Finopolis 2016, a forum on innovative financial technologies. Held on October 13-14 in Kazan, the capital of the innovation-friendly republic of Tatarstan, the contest was organized by Generation S, a government-backed initiative to bridge startups with large corporates in Russia.
The winners of the contest were:
- Oz Photo Expert, a technology developed by Media Forensic Software to verify the authenticity of digital photographies. The startup will receive a 3 million ruble grant (approximately $48,000 at the current exchange rate) and mentoring from Mikhail Erenburg, a top executive at Sberbank, the national savings bank;
- Farzoom, which has developed solutions to predict bank clients’ behavior. The startup was awarded with a 2 million rubles grant ($32,000) and mentoring from Victor Remsha, CEO at Finam Investment Holding;
- Brainysoft, which offers automated scoring and other systems for banks and microfinance organizations. The project will receive a 1 million rubles grant ($16,000) and mentoring from Alexander Galitsky, a figure of the Russian high tech industry and the founder of Almaz Capital Partners.
The three winning startups are either current or future residents of Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow.
Also highlighted during the competition were BankEx, BI-BL Service, Cryptogramm, DD Online, Fandiko, Finazzi, FinHub, Machinomy, MoiKassir, PandaMoney, PlanKaban, Reputation Verify, Smart Security, Talkbank.io and Yango.
Among other initiatives of the central bank to get involved in the developments of financial technologies were, earlier this year, the creation of a working group with key market players and of a dedicated department, as reported by East-West Digital News. The bank is particularly interested in cybersecurity, digitization, identification technologies, shared Big Data storage, Internet-of-Things, artificial intelligence, virtualization, cloud technologies, the ‘uberization’ of finance, etc.
