The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF or FRII in Russian), Russia’s main startup investment fund, has announced a partnership with Coca Cola HBC Russia to create an in-house accelerator for the company’s employees in Russia.
The program will teach Coca-Cola HBC Russia’s employees how to launch startups inside the corporation. IIDF experts will help employees create and launch their own business projects from scratch and make use of their entrepreneurial skills.
At start, the project will involve 19 preselected company employees, who come from different departments and regions.
“Building up the best teams in the industry and developing growth mindset culture among our best employees are the strategic priorities for our company. We have been actively building up a team of active and engaged employees,” said Tamara Kinunen, Senior Talent Development Expert at Coca-Cola HBC Russia.
“By participating in the program, they will be able to get a unique and captivating experience of solving strategic tasks for our company, starting from an idea and ending with the implementation of their final product that is in demand by both our internal and external clients. It is a unique opportunity for us to provide the participants with the resources for launching their business ideas. In fact, they will all have their own internal startup project aimed at promoting our company’s business strategy,” Kinune explained.
From idea to pilot
The program is divided into several phases. First, the participants will determine which business areas of the company they are planning to launch their projects in and study the best solutions, taking as an example their own company’s various divisions, countries, and companies.
Then, they will identify promising projects meant for optimizing business processes or introducing innovative solutions. The results of these projects will be presented to the top management on the Demo Day at the end of August. The selected projects will be implemented as pilot ones at different divisions of Coca-Cola HBC Russia by the close of 2019.
IIDF experts and trackers will step in at the idea development stage. They will help the participants identify their best ideas and check key hypotheses involving the optimization of business processes and improving performance indicators.
The IIDF claims it uses a startup acceleration methodology that is specifically adapted to corporate operations. Over the past 12 months, the fund has launched such projects with Russian mobile operator Beeline, truck maker Kamaz, and French retail giant Leroy Merlin.
The IIDF was launched in 2013 following a presidential initiative as an instrument to support the emergence of a strong startup industry in Russia. The fund has mostly invested in the companies in the field of artificial intelligence and machine learning, which account for 13% of its portfolio. Other supported fields include e-commerce, healthtech and fintech.
