News

On April 19, 2013 Astral IT Center, Kaluga, hosted Russian StartUp Tour (Road show), a federal-scale event. It’s worth mentioning that some highly reputable Russian investment and innovation market experts attended the event.

The key message of the forum was the following: being an entrepreneur is hard, but not dangerous. Representatives of various support foundations stressed the importance of innovative and IT developments, as people promoting unique projects and socially important ideas are “the elite of the modern society”. Mikhail Kharuzin, RVK Seed Fund Managing Director for Investments, called for more daring approach to business ideas implementation. He said: “A business should be useful and profitable. If you manage to defend your project, you could get RVK financial support: 25% - your investments, 75% - our investments”.

Pekka Viliakainen, Skolkovo Fund President Adviser, said: “Kaluga Region has a huge potential for SME development. <…> A person striving to development his own business should form an information environment, establish contacts, because such contacts may support a project, provide financing or become a supplier in the future. Therefore, the objective of the road show is to shape a single source for collection of data on region startup communities to promote interaction and improve experience sharing between regions”.