Earlier this month Pulsar Venture Capital, an early-stage investment fund from Tatarstan, an entity of the Russian Federation, announced the launch of a startup accelerator in partnership with government agency Enterprise Ireland and Dublin-based early stage investor NDRC.
The accelerator promises to help startups “enter the global market and find an investor or strategic partner in 100 days.” Three locations are involved: Kazan (the capital of Tatarstan), Dublin and Sillicon Valley, with each selected startup going through boot camps in the three countries, as Ivan Dobryshev of Pulsar’s press service explained to East-West Digital News.
Startups may apply online for the first program until April 3, 2016. Fifty of them will be selected in the fields of information technologies, industrial technologies, hardware, oil and gas innovations, biotechnology, medicine of the future and new materials.
Each selected startup will receive an investment of up to 8 million rubles (a little less than $100,000 at the current exchange rate) from the program. In addition, “the international partners have expressed readiness to invest up to 1 million euro in each startup,” Dobryshev said.
The startups will also benefit from access to engineering centers, international expertise and mentorship, and other support services.
“The program’s main objective is to launch Russian startups on the global market,” stated Pulsar’s CEO Pavel Korolev. “We aim to create the conditions for this — not only by providing the first investment, but also by helping them find international partners, investors and relevant mentors.”
Not all Russian startup entrepreneurs consider international expansion, however, Korolev notes. “But nowadays it is virtually impossible for a tech startup to develop a product without integrating itself to the global innovation ecosystem,” the investor believes.
Pulsar’s acceleration program is backed by the Investment and Venture Fund of the Republic of Tatarstan as well as by RVC, Russia’s government-sponsored fund of funds for innovation, and the Fund for Assistance to Small Innovative Enterprises (FASIE), another state-backed organization.
Irish hunt for Russian startups
“The launch of Pulsar’s International Accelerator is a positive step forward to identify a pipeline of companies from Tatarstan and the surrounding regions which are suitable for rapid internationalisation using the experience of Ireland’s innovation ecosystem,” stated Gerard Michael McCarthy, Russia/CIS Director at Enterprise Ireland.
In support of this initiative, Enterprise Ireland’s Overseas Competitive Start Fund (CSF), paired with the Irish Start-Up Entrepreneur Visa Programme, allows selected companies from all over the former Soviet Union to consider Ireland as a base for R&D, production, and international sales.
The first round of the 2015 Overseas CSF received 87 applications, of which one third came from Russian speaking countries, according to McCarthy. Of the eight winning international companies, two were Russian, receiving seed funding of 50,000 euro each.
“In December 2015 newly-registered Countbox Ltd became the first ever Russian start-up to receive significant funding from Enterprise Ireland’s High Potential Start-Up Fund, estimated at €250,000,” reminds McCarthy.
Countbox was introduced to us at the Venture Fair in Kazan in April 2015. It took just seven months to move from first contact through the application process to a significant funding decision for Enterprise Ireland’s first Russian company. “This which should encourage other Russian start-ups to apply for this programme in the expectation of realistic and relatively rapid results,” believes McCarthy.
An innovation-friendly republic
The Autonomous Republic of Tatarstan stands out as one of Russia’s most economically developed regions. It is situated on the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, approximately 800 km east of Moscow. Kazan is a city of more than 1.1 million.
While already known for its developed assets in the oil and petrochemical sector, in aircraft manufacture, instrument and mechanical engineering, Tatarstan has also developed ambitious high tech projects for the past few years. IT-Park, which claims to be the biggest technopark in Eastern Europe, emerged in 2009 with the participation of Cisco.
Last year, the local authorities launched Innopolis, a brand new “high-tech city” which plans to host thousands of researchers, students and entrepreneurs.
Tatarstan is also home to one of the most notable events on the Russian venture scene, the Kazan Venture Fair, held in April of each year.
Last year Startup Sabantuy, a Kazan-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.
The Pulsar accelerator initiative has been supported “personally” by Tatarstan’s President Rustam Minnikhanov and Prime Minister Ildar Khalikov, Dobryshev told East-West Digital News.
“Today this is probably the most significant of Tatarstan’s international initiatives in the field of innovation, even though last year officials from the republic had meetings with French, Chinese, Cuban and other delegations,” Dobryshev said.
