The iCoinSoftware and Simex teams from a fintech incubator hosted by the Higher School of Economics have demonstrated at a “startup prom” how they earn money.

On 5 September, the HSE Business Incubator in Moscow was hosting the Fintech Demo Day – a presentation of graduate projects to investors and partner companies. The HSE programme’s mission is to help entrepreneurs create a competitive fintech product for the global market.

At the beginning of the programme in May 2016, some participants joined it only having a concept to develop into a viable business. Others came already having a business ready for launch and used the knowledge gained at the incubator to upgrade it even further. During the meeting, they were explaining the advantages of their projects to investors and outlined their plans for the future. After the official part, the startupers together with interested investors had an opportunity to talk face to face.

“The teams came well prepared for the presentations, we have seen their progress, their whole path [...] The teams have shown that they can achieve success in business, that is, earn money. Some of them already have profit, although a few months ago they had no sales at all,” said the incubator’s director Michael Erman.

According to him, the accelerator attracted over a hundred external experts from Russia and abroad representing banks, financial companies and fintech-oriented law firms. Erman said that initially, 38 projects applied for the programme, 15 of them were selected and 11 reached the finish line, including two blockchain-related startups. One of them aims to use the distributed ledger to create a decentralised investment platform, the other develops an app for creating blockchain-based exchanges.

Simex is a platform for online crowdinvesting. According to the founder Denis Kurilchik, blockchain will be integrated into it by November-December 2016. It will allow investors to track their funds, thus raising confidence in the platform. The developers plan to issue equity interests in the form of digital tokens which would be traded not only on the Simex platform but on various digital exchanges.

To get investment, the projects are discussed, pre-moderated and voted on the blockchain. The platform charges fees for transaction processing and contract registration. During the first year of work, the Simex team supported 27 projects worth more than 46 mln rubles (over $713,000).

iCoinSoftware is a vendor of packaged software that allows launching a platform for blockchain assets trade. According to its co-founder Julia Yurieva, the startup is already bringing profit. To date, the team has installed blockchain exchanges for two clients, found a distributor for Russia and CIS and is negotiating with five potential buyers. After the “startup prom” at the HSE, the developers are planning to apply for participation in business accelerators in the UK, Finland, France, the Netherlands and the US. They also aim to challenge their major competitor – the US company AlphaPoint.

HSE {Pro} Fintech is an acceleration program for startups launched this year by the Higher School of Economics’ Business Incubator in cooperation with the online search provider Yandex, the Saint-Petersburg Bank, the National Settlement Depository, SmartHub venture boutique, the payment operator QIWI and Russian Venture Company.

Lyudmila Brus