On December 21 «The final of the Corporate Acceleration Program of 2021: logistics» was held in JSC VNIIZHT. Mr. Sergey Vinogradov, the Director General of JSC VNIIZHT, opened the event. He had noticed that the Accelerator had received about 2000 applications since the start of its work, of which 200 projects had been pre-reviewed and 61 had reached the final stage. «This achievement proves the interest and the necessity to continue the work of the JSC RZD Corporate Accelerator in the field of the transport industry and the development of innovations,» — said the Director General of VNIIZHT.
More than 500 applications from 12 countries were submitted for participation in the «Logistics» program, of which 150 had passed supplementary expert examination and about 70 projects passed selection within the framework of pitch-sessions with functional customers of JSC RZD and other partners. As a result, 21 projects were included in the acceleration program, 15 projects reached the final.
The jury included representatives from JSC RZD, business-partners, as well as representatives of venture and investment funds- Fund «New industry», «Kama Flow» and «Venture fund MTS». In 2021, the transport and logistics companies such as PJSC «TransContainer», Fesco, LLC «Gazpromtrans» significantly expanded the number of accelerator partners. In addition, the Russian Post, large manufacturing enterprises of PJSC Kirovsky factory, JSC Severstal, divisions of TMX Group joined the partner program.
According to the Demo-day, 7 startup winning-teams were selected: Jolt (project: car cleaning from frozen cargo residues using a magnetic pulse), Cаllpy (optimization of work with clients on the website with a help of app), RevGames (attracting customers to marketplace by games), «Mpfit» (automation of small-area warehouses), ARIPIX (development of robots to replace human manual labor), Digital Wave (estimation of bulk cargo volume using hardware) and Axelot WMS X5 (automatic process management in the warehouse).
A number of projects interested the partners of the program. The Moscow Venture Investment Development Fund (Moscow Seed Fund) awarded a certificate for 500 thousand rubles for the development of the project. According to the results of successful testing, the winning-teams will gain an opportunity to develop further their projects on the railway network and long-term cooperation with Russian Railways and partners.
