On February 3, the eleven graduates of the EU4Business Armenia Start-up Academy presented their start-ups at the American University of Armenia.
The Academy is implemented within the framework of the EU4Business SMEDA programme, funded by the European Union and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and supported by the German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ).
The co-founders of the Academy, Ashot Arzumanyan and Hambardzum Kaghketsyan, presented the results of the Academy's activities.
“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 programme in Armenia. Today, we celebrate the graduation of the first batch… A rising wave of bright founders evolves in Armenia to fill the pipeline of the next generation start-ups and the Armenia Start-up Academy is intended to play a cornerstone role in this ecosystem,” said Ashot Arzumanyan.
In total, 18 start-ups - 8 main participants and 10 listeners - participated in the pre-acceleration programme. During the 12-week programme, 43 seminars and lectures and more than 150 individual meetings with mentors took place.
The start-ups worked on their ‘going to market’ strategy, gained practical knowledge through constant cooperation with entrepreneurial assistants, established new networks of collaboration and strong links with mentors, and got some investment offers.
About the Graduated Start-ups
- Coach2All: an application that takes individuals to reach their athletic goals by providing coaching guidance, which includes dynamic training programmes 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 start-up 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 a virtual colouring book with tools such as pencils, crayons, brushes, watercolour 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-lessons.
- 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.
The Armenia Start-up Academy is now starting a second phase of admissions.
The EU4Business SMEDA project supports the improvement of the business and investment climate for SMEs in Armenia. It aims to strengthen the private sector, support SME coordination mechanisms, and foster links between research institutions and the private sector, as well as providing access to finance for SMEs.