On September 7, the qualifying stage of the Start-Up as a Graduation Project programme took place at the site of the SSU Business Boiling Point. The Start-Up as a Graduation Project programme appeared in Russia in 2019, and in SSU it has been implementing since 2022. Its first graduates are the winners of the Student Start-Up competition of Innovation Promotion Foundation, participants and winners of the All-Russian Acceleration Programme of the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation.
This academic year, fifteen teams presented their business concepts. The participants of the qualifying stage included representatives of eight SSU institutes and faculties, as well as students of Vavilov University.
The coordinator and curator of the programme, Head of the Gazpromneft – SSU Centre Maria Zimina opened the first meeting of the new cohort, outlining the main goals of the programme. ‘The main task of our large programme is to give you the opportunity to understand how a product is born from your wonderful ideas, teach you to navigate the world of business ideas and projects, and help you make the first steps in technological entrepreneurship.’
Deputy Head of the Education Office, Saratov State University, Julia Sedavkina said that the university had developed an additional professional course in project technologies in entrepreneurship aimed at the participants of the programme. The course graduates will be become investment projects specialists.
The projects were evaluated by more than ten, including the members of the regional branch of the All-Russian Society of Inventors and Innovators: Chair of the regional branch Andrei Rossoshanskii, Deputy Chair of ARSII for Public Relations Sergei Marinin, CEO of the Centre for Entrepreneurship and Family Business Support Aleksei Kirillov; Principal of Engineering Lyceum of Saratov Natalia Sheremetyeva; a project manager of the Representative Office – Contact Centre of Presidential Grants Foundation, a federal expert of the We Are Together award Rezeda Bakirova; an entrepreneur, the founder of the Body Movements brand and the Proforma sewing association, the winner of the regional stage of the Young Entrepreneur of Russia federal award Vladimir Safarov; representatives of the expert community, heads of business structures and entrepreneurs Mikhail Weinberg; Lyudmila Gelmanova; Alena Mikhailova; Irina Dudareva.
Andrei Rossoshanskii spoke about the support of promising projects provided by the All-Russian Society of Inventors and Innovators, and invited the authors and teams of these projects to apply for the annual ARSII-2023 Award.
The students presented their projects in the Technological Entrepreneurship and Social and Creative Entrepreneurship sections. Such projects as a vein visualisation device, a pupil electronic diary, a bilingual platform on local history, a series of board educational games, and others were presented to the experts and participants. The joint team of SSU and Vavilov University proposed to create an agency for the development of regional products based on sorghum flour. And fourth-year students of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technologies spoke about the EduPlay application with free educational games for preschoolers.
During the academic year, all teams will receive expert and consulting support, assessment of investment potential, and will develop their projects to the pre-implementation stage.
