“These teams are going to change the world for better…” This is how Ashot Arzumanyan, co-founder and CEO of the Catalyst Foundation, characterized the startups participating in the Demo Day of the first batch of the Armenia Startup Academy, which took place on February 3, 2018 at the American University of Armenia.
“It was precisely a year ago these days that we started to talk with our partners from the European Union about the importance of having a pre-acceleration program in Armenia. In October of last year we launched the Academy together with our coworking space - Hero House. Today, we celebrate the graduation of the first batch, we run the first quantum computing courses in Armenia, together with partners we initiated yLedger community of blockchain developers, and many new initiatives are yet come… A rising wave of bright founders evolves in Armenia to fill the pipeline of the next generation startups and Armenia Startup Academy is intended to play a cornerstone role in this ecosystem” - said Ashot Arzumanyan.
Peer Priewich, Technical Adviser at EU4Business SMEDA Project, mentioned that it's a great initiative adding value to the ecosystem and GIZ with EU are very excited to support the creation of such knowledge cluster in Armenia.
Hambardzum Kaghketsyan, co-founder of the Catalyst Foundation, introduced the aim of the academy, highlights and achievements both of the academy and the startups. During the first batch, overall 18 teams were selected: 8 full participants and 10 listeners. The program lasted for 12 weeks which included overall 43 lectures and workshops delivered by field professionals from Armenia, Europe, United States, Australia, and more than 150 one-on-one mentorship meetings.
Currently, the academy has 11 graduates, 2 out of which received investment commitments. The graduate startups include Aimhub, WiMedia, EarlyOne, InOne, Embry, PicPen, Coach2All, Himnark, WooChess, Breedge and Triple-E. During the Demo Day the graduated teams delivered 5 minute pitches which were followed by networking and discussions at dedicated booths.
About the Graduated Startups
Coach2All: an application that takes individuals to reach their athletic goals by providing coaching guidance which includes dynamic training programs and appropriate suggestions.
Aimhub: a platform that allows AI researchers and engineers to deploy their pre-trained AI models for others to access and consume them openly.
WiMedia: an advertising platform based on public Wi-Fi hotspots and in-depth proximity marketing strategies. The aim of the startup is to create the biggest free public internet platform in the world.
Earlyone aims to help people save their valuable time spent in vain while waiting in queues.
Embry provides a tiny foot wearable scale and activity tracker which is directly connected with an application that helps overweight people, also busy people to track lost kilograms, set proper goals for weight loss and healthy lifestyle.
PicPen helps kids and toddlers to be creative by teaching them skills and stimulating their imagination through an application which contains virtual coloring book with tools such as pencils, crayons, brushes, watercolor brushes and patterns.
Himnark delivers a SaaS solution that empowers businesses by delivering quality actionable data and relieving admin teams from enormous effort spent on paperwork generation.
WooChess is chess study website that provides full functionality for complete online-lesson.
Breedge is a cloud-based platform which connects businesses with students that are potential employees.
InOne is a new interactive communication channel between businesses and customers that helps customers to save time and money during shopping.
Triple-E is an Augmented Reality universal platform that allows the user to easily create AR on mobile devices.
Article Series by iTel.am about the graduate startups: Coach2All, Aimhub, WiMedia, Earlyone, PicPen, Himnark, WooChess, Breedge, InOne, Triple-E.
Media coverage: Hetq.am, EU NEIGHBOURS east.
About the Armenia Startup Academy
The Armenia Startup Academy is a Catalyst Foundation project implemented in the framework of EU4Business Support to SME Development (SMEDA) Project, which is co-funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by GIZ’s Private Sector Development in South Caucasus Programme. SMEDA is part of the EU4Business and EU4Innovation initiatives of the European Union.