Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow, has signed an agreement with Cherkizovo Group, a major Russian meat producer, to create a startup accelerator in the fields of biotech in agriculture and industry.
Cherkizovo will rent 120 sq. m. in the technopark to provide a co-working and testing areas, along with mentoring sessions, to at least 10 Skolkovo startups.
“We’re a big company, the biggest meat producer in Russia. We have a lot of land resources, and we’ve had a lot of commercial success. But we understand that the old economy is behind us, and that now there is a new economy that is closely tied to new ideas, IT, biotech and so on,” Sergey Polyakov, CEO of Cherkizovo’s poultry division, said in an exchange with the Skolkovo Foundation.
The acceleration center will be the first one in Russia to focus on biotech in agriculture, said Evgeny Tkachenko, director of key partnerships at the Skolkovo biomed cluster.
This initiative is particularly timely given that Russian agriculture is growing rapidly, following the import bans on many food items which followed Western sanctions, noted Tkachenko.
Source: Skolkovo Foundation
