Sberbank spares $400k for six start-ups
The first wave of Sberbank’s Sber#Up in-house accelerator has ended with six start-ups getting RUB 27.1 million ($409,000) worth of investment from the bank.
Granted it’s all in-house and for its employees, but the Russian bank keeps on digging the innovation vibes.
Lev Khasis, first deputy chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, says: “Every year around 180 venture deals are concluded in Russia. Today we helped improve that statistic because six deals between Sberbank and start-ups amount to 3% of the entire Russian venture market.”
The super six in the money mix are SportMe, Personal BigData, StilusBot, PayZakat, GetMeBack and Start-up@Check-up. In the future these will be integrated in Sberbank’s ecosystem.
Some of the start-ups are not fintech as such. So only the relevant ones can stay in this report.
Personal BigData offers microbusiness retail points. The project uses big data analysis and artificial intelligence (AI). Its monetisation model is based on payment for attracted clients.
PayZakat is a payments platform for collecting and distributing compulsory and voluntary contributions that members of the Muslim community give to the poor.
GetMeBack is a platform for constructing digital loyalty programmes. It lets businesses do away with plastic loyalty cards and replace them with mobile applications that have bonus systems, notifications and collection of user feedback.
Start-up@Check-up is an online service for calculating the profitability of businesses using Sberbank’s big data (data about location, activity, type of business, financing method etc).
The Sber#Up in-house accelerator is a programme that offers all Sberbank employees support to create their own IT businesses.
The organisers received 575 applications to participate at the first stage. 12 teams participated in the final. On 7 August they presented their ideas to a jury made up of senior Sberbank executives and private venture investors.
Sberbank invited the Business Incubator of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) to develop the accelerator programme. According to the bank, it is Europe’s third-largest and the world’s seventh-largest business accelerator that works with early-stage start-ups.
