IIT Mumbai, Global Venture Alliance organize Indo-Russian entrepreneur exchange program

MUMBAI: Premier Indian educational institution IIT-Bombay’s Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE) in Mumbai and Global Venture Alliance (GVA) in Moscow are partnering to run a bilateral entrepreneur exchange program, entitled ‘India Russia Bridge for Innovations (IRBI)’.

In the second half of September this year, a cohort of ten innovative startups from across India will participate in a 2-week accelerator program in Moscow that will include educational, practical, networking and cultural components aiming to facilitate a structured introduction into the Russian market.

The program is the first initiative between India and Russia with a focus on science and technology based entrepreneurship. The entire program is fully sponsored and supported by the Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology (DST), and the GVA in anticipation that partnerships and collaborations forged in course of IRBI, will not only lay foundations for increased bilateral trade across the nations, but also further goals of key national initiatives like Start-Up India, Make-in-India and Digital India.

The selected startups are in areas of medical devices and applications, energy, IoT, Edtech and Retail Tech. The startups have been identified on the basis of scalability, and with the inputs from GVA for potential of immediate partnership with businesses in Russia. The expected outcome of the program is for the entrepreneurs to acquire knowledge from experts in Russia in order to find partners, clients and test their products in local market through a collaborative ecosystem. There is also a potential to pioneer new cross border partnerships and collaborative programs between the two countries.

Dmitry Rogozin, the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and his Indian counterpart, Sushma Swaraj met on September 13, 2016 in New Delhi at the 22nd session of the Indo-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Trade, Economic, Scientific, Technological and Cultural Cooperation (IRIGC-TEC). They discussed a plethora of topics including expanding bilateral trade to reach the $30 billion goal, Indian entrepreneurs behind 10 innovative startups will leave for Moscow the very next day for this one-of-a-kind Indo-Russian entrepreneur exchange program in attempt to do further just that goal. Leading up to the much anticipated India-Russia summit between PM Modi and President Putin on the sidelines of the 6th BRICS Summit in Goa on 15-16th of October, officials and entrepreneurs in both India and Russia have been eager to make the ambitious commitment of increasing the bilateral trade threefold in the next decade a reality. Programs such as the IRBI will go a long way in sparking a strong bilateral economic tie in innovation and entrepreneurship between the two nations.

IRBI is a program with its educational, practical, networking and cultural components facilitating a structured introduction into Russia for the participating startups. This two-week immersion program will cover a plethora of topics ranging from the ways to engage the 150 million strong Russian market to the nuances of doing business there. The entrepreneurs, other than attending networking events with a wide range of industry stakeholders, will also visit the Skolkovo Innovation Park at Moscow.