SPbU’s start-up competition announced, with fund over 2.5 mln rubles
Now you can submit your application to the third competition of the business projects at St Petersburg University “SPbU Start-Up — 2018”.
The student team that will come up with the best business idea and decide to open their own small innovative enterprise will get a grant of 1.3 mln rubles from the SPbU’s endowment fund. The prize fund is over 2.5 mln rubles.
SPbU has held the third “SPbU Start-Up”. The first winner is LeanCheck that was awarded 250 thousand rubles to develop their project that focuses on quick and value-for-money services to evaluate lead in the biological fluids in our body.
The main requirement is to make a team of three-five students in various fields of study from SPbU, develop a research project that will have a potential to become commercially successful, and submit your application form from November 10 to December 15, 2017. If the jury select your project, you will be invited to present it in February, and 15 teams will be selected for the final round. Once you are selected for the final round, you will receive 10,000 rubles from the SPbU’s endowment fund during three months to continue your project.
Only those teams that will present the most innovative and potentially successful projects will get to the final and get prizes: 300,000 rubles for the first place, 200,000 for the second place, and 100,000 for the third place. What is more is that two small innovative enterprises that are formed with SPbU will get two grants to develop the companies: 1 mln rubles and 700,000 rubles.
In 2017, the winner was a team that developed a unique coating for the walls that cleans air under light and prevents bacteria from spreading. The team has already got 1 mln rubles and registered their small innovative enterprise. After they won a student competition, they were invited to present their project at the Youth Career Forum, at the show “Petersburg Start-Up”, and they won a start-up marathon “White nights startup”.
“To create and develop business projects is vital for students at the University, — said the Director of the SPbU’s Endowment Fund Evgenii Pen. — We hope that new requirements will make our winners open their enterprises just after the awarding ceremony. If we want to develop our science and business, we should join our efforts and bring together experts from various fields. This is what we teach our contestants».
This year, what we have introduced is that we have included more topics, among them is Robototronics and Block-Chain Technologies that arouse most interest among the students.
Besides, your project can be concerned with biomedicine, innovative teaching methods, artificial intelligence, Arctic exploration, informatics in medicine, energy-saving technologies, and others. These topics serve as recommendations; you don’t have to necessarily focus on them only.
As a rule, scientific supervisors can also take part: if their students win, they will get 100,000 rubles each. We haven’t changed other key requirements: each team can present only one project, and you can be a member of one team only. Learn more at the web-site of the University.