TPU and Innopolis organize the StartupHouse student competition

TOMSK, Sep 15 – RIA Tomsk. Tomsk Polytechnic University (TPU) and Innopolis University are organizing a startup competition StartupHouse, whose participants get a chance to become part of a business accelerator for student projects and receive investments for their project of up to 10 million rubles, the university's press service reported on Wednesday.

Earlier, it was reported that since 2017, students at TPU have been able to defend their graduation theses as startups. The first graduates of the "startup programs" were master's students of the "Entrepreneurship in Innovation" program. In August 2021, a unified platform for Tomsk universities was presented at the All-Russian Intensive "Archipelago 2121", which will help create at least 100 inter-university technological startups per year.

"TPU and Innopolis are organizing the StartupHouse competition... 50 young startupper are taking part in the competition. These are university graduates from all over Russia who have defended their diplomas in the form of a startup. They will take part in a four-day full-time educational intensive, during which experts and tutors will teach the contestants how to come up with original business ideas, create business plans and speak in front of investors," the statement said.

Following the results of the contest, StartupHouse experts will select 20 projects for the three-month acceleration program of Innopolis University and TPU. The participants will present their projects to investors during a demo day at the All-Russian Forum on Digital Transformation DID in Innopolis in early December. They will have an opportunity to receive investments in their project of up to 10 million rubles from investors, business angels and venture funds.

"Together with Innopolis University we decided to gather the best student startups in the country and help them develop their projects with the help of cool experts. In addition, these days we will be discussing with 30 Russian universities the best practices of student entrepreneurship," the press service quotes Director of the TPU School of Engineering Entrepreneurship Alexander Osadchenko.

Tomsk Polytechnic will be represented at the competition by three graduates with their startup projects: Ruslan Ishtuganov with a financial portfolio application, Sergey Korshunov with a project of orthopaedic equipment for children with cerebral palsy and Igor Balashov with a startup of an integrated video analytics system. The results of the intensive will be summarized by the experts on September 17, the press service added.