InspiRussia hackathon will be hosted by the IT capital of Russia – Innopolis City near Kazan – on 17-18 September. The first prize is a place on the InspirAsia startup accelerator in Singapore.

The InspiRussia acceleration programme is organised by the venture fund Life.SREDA featuring experts from Microsoft, QIWI and «Evotor» (MPOS). Professors of computer sciences from Beijing and Dubai universities will give lectures discussing the perspectives of fintech industry and blockchain in particular.

“The fintech industry is developing rapidly. We are ready and willing to invest our expertise and resources into promising projects. The hackathon is an excellent opportunity to gather a team and turn your ideas into a working prototype. We will be happy to see as many as possible ambitious and promising teams and individuals passionate about fintech and blockchain,” InspiRussia CEO Maxim Avdeev says.

During the hackathon, the teams will have 24 hours to create a project from scratch, from a mere concept to a working prototype. For this purpose, they will be provided with ready-made API and SDK from the event’s sponsors. The finalised projects will be assessed by a jury of experts including, among all, an AI to test the project’s code. Voting will be carried out and recorded in a blockchain.

In addition to a place on the Singapore accelerator InspirAsia, contestants will be awarded other prizes: the first place gets a set of XBOX One, the second place – three smartphones Lumia 550, the third place – three hard drives. Besides, all winners will receive a subscription to the Microsoft software for startups BizSpark, which gives access to a set of licensed development tools, including cloud-based Azure resources. Participants will also be able to get initial funding for the development of their projects through crowdfunding during the hackathon.

Admission is free, and both offline and online participation is available, the organisers note. Preliminary registration is required on the official event website.

The InspiRussia accelerator is held for the first time. It is based on the format of InspirAsia first organised by Life.SREDA in 2015. In April 2016, the company launched a separate Banking on Blockchain Fund with a capital of $50 mln for investment in blockchain projects.

The hosts expect close cooperation between InspirAsia (Singapore) and InspiRussia (Innopolis), investment director of Life.SREDA Igor Pesin told CoinFox in an interview.

Elena Platonova