On April 17, 6 PM AMT, Armenia Startup Academy held a Digital Demo Day to showcase its 12 graduating companies of Pre-accelerator Batch 6 innovating in robotics, security, biotech, healthtech, VR technologies, and many more.
The 6th Batch of the Armenia Startup Academy Pre-accelerator was implemented by Catalyst Foundation and supported by the European Union’s EU4Business “Technology Development for Armenia” project implemented by GIZ.
During the Pre-acceleration programme, the selected startups have gone through a 12-week entrepreneurship programme that included 22 knowledge-sharing sessions with industry experts and 150+ office hours with the Academy team and external mentors focused on customer discovery and validation, go-to-market strategy development, general business development, and pitching all tailored to each startup’s needs.
The Demo Day was streamed live on Hero House YouTube channel. After the Demo Day, a networking event was hosted in Hero House where the founders had a chance to talk to different investors and entrepreneurs from the local tech startup ecosystem. Interested audiences can still contact the founders by scheduling a meeting with them through our website.
The event launch was given by Liana Karapetyan, Programme Manager of the Armenia Startup Academy, who welcomed the online attendees and introduced the programme and Demo Day agenda.
Following the opening, welcome remarks were shared by Ms. Andrea Wiktorin, Head of European Union Delegation to Armenia; Wilhelm Hugo, Team Leader at GIZ Private Sector Development and TVET South Caucasus Programme and Ashot Arzumanyan, Co-founder of Catalyst Foundation.
EU Ambassador Andrea Wiktorin stressed the readiness of the European Union to support Armenia more. “...we do a lot in the field of digitalization, technology, mathematics, and science and these are all areas where startups can work very successfully, so I’m happy that you joined Armenia Startup Academy and I wish you a lot of success”.
“One of the objectives of our project is to contribute to the development of the technology sector in Armenia and ensure sustainable long term results,” mentioned Wilhelm Hugo, “We are very happy to put our efforts into facilitating the side of the business and develop the entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem in Armenia”.
“I want to express our huge appreciation to our long term partners from the EU Delegation and GIZ. Through the support of European Union, we launched many successful initiatives together and yet more to come. Today, together with our partners and a community of tech entrepreneurs and investors we celebrate the power of focus, commitment, and determination,” said Ashot Arzumanyan.
Halfway through the Demo Day, Liana Karapetyan shared success stories of the Academy alumni. Some of the highlights are below:
The programme has opened new opportunities for the founders and enriched them with practical skills and knowledge for their startup journey.
“Armenia Startup Academy and SmartGateVC opened the Gates to a new mindset, new knowledge. This experience is worth having even if you fail your startup or if you don't have any. It activates the brain in a way you will probably need in the future,” said Hayk Kosyan, Co-founder of RoboDel, Batch 6 participant.
“The Pre-accelerator programme provided our team a comprehensive exposure to the vital aspects of doing a startup. From the very beginning, the support of the ASA team helped us to avoid common mistakes and allowed us to further straighten our roadmap. Most of all we enjoyed the networking events which brought us much-needed exposure to the investors and industry professionals.” said Rafael Harutyunyan, Co-founder of Stingle.
“The Pre-acceleration Batch 6 was an incredible journey for manot. Despite having a deep tech background, the teams haven't had an opportunity to work for a business before. With hero mentors, we gained unchangeable skills for developing startups from scratch.” said Chinar Movsisyan, CEO and Co-founder of manot.
Below you can meet the graduating companies of the Academy Pre-accelerator Batch 6:
RoboDel develops a self-driving last-mile delivery robot. It allows customers of restaurants and food ordering platforms to get their food/parcel deliveries on time, fresh, sanitized, and untouched.
Stingle Photos is a secure, convenient, and easy-to-use gallery application with sharing, backup, and sync functionality for your photos and videos.
VR Inn is a VR-tech company focused on enterprise training solutions development with a proprietary VR Inn Growth platform to deliver, manage, and control training of employees.
Irakan VR is a VR-based system which reduces acute pain and anxiety during pediatric procedures.
Immensus is an AI-based fitness application that allows sportsmen and healthy lifestyle followers to receive recommendations regarding training.
Foldink is a biotech company that allows biomedical researchers from universities and scientific laboratories to engineer living tissues directly in their lab using 3D bioprinters and bioinks.
iMedCloud is an AI driven platform that allows plastic surgeons and cosmetologists to create and store the media content - patient’s public photos and videos, in an easy and fast way.
manot is an automated annotation tool which provides a novel approach for drone data.
* manot’s participation in the programme has been supported by Catalyst Foundation.
LoopEx is an application, which helps digital shoppers to find and buy what they see without having to describe what they’re looking for in a search box.
BitNotes is a mobile application that lets users save text notes with just one tap while listening to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, etc.
Perpetuum Motors is developing a highly scalable and flexible self-driving technology that can drive in any environment.
JarvisVoice is an AI-powered software for telecom and tech product company call centers that listens and analyzes daily calls to detect both customer and support agent behavior.
About Armenia Startup Academy
Armenia Startup Academy is an entrepreneurship and startup education programme aimed to prepare startups to raise pre-seed capital as well as expand to local and global markets through its Pre-acceleration and Traction programmes. The Academy Pre-acceleration programme guides prototype-stage startups through idea validation, customer development, go-to-market strategy, and pitching. The Academy Traction programme is a mentorship-based growth programme designed for companies that have managed to gain initial traction, and need support on intensifying it.
Throughout the 6 cycles of the Armenia Startup Academy Pre-acclerator and 1 cycle of the Traction programmes, 112 startups and 266 entrepreneurs have been involved and a network of 100+ high profile professionals and mentors have been engaged with the companies. The programme alumni have already raised more than €4M in the form of VC and angel investments, got accepted to global top startup programmes including Y Combinator and Berkeley SkyDeck and have created over 150 jobs.