Teams that develop technological innovations in the field of digital employment, education and business documentation management received a financial incentive of a total of 20,000 euros for further development of their products within the MTS startup acceleration program. This year, Telekom Serbia realized this program for the fourth time in partnership with the Startit organization, with which it has been cooperating for many years on strengthening the domestic startup ecosystem, primarily through the Startit Rast educational platform.
The incentives were given to Recrooit, a recruitment platform based on professional recommendations, Bracelet Maker, STEM kit and robot toy for girls aged 8 to 12, as well as DocsCube, a platform for advanced management, sharing and document storage in an organization. According to the five-member jury, these teams made the greatest progress during the three-month Startit Growth program, showing at the same time an exceptional readiness to fully dedicate themselves to perfecting their digital product and placing it on the market.
“A serious step forward has been made in the recent period in mapping the structure and needs of the domestic startup ecosystem. Telekom Serbia launched this program precisely in order to encourage teams in the most vulnerable, early phase of development to put together all the necessary cubes as soon as possible and achieve compliance between products and market needs. We will use all these experiences in the future to further support domestic and regional startups that create new value with their innovations and push the boundaries of technological development,” said Mila Milenkovic, Director of the Strategy Department of Telekom Serbia.
Telekom Serbia, in addition to the financial incentive, within the MTS startup program, provides acceleration for the awarded teams and additional mentoring advice, free services and support when entering the markets of the region where it is present. Startit Rast, as the oldest accelerator program in Serbia, formerly known as the Startup Academy, has received a new concept in addition to its new name this year. Each team had a customized approach and 1-1 mentoring support, as well as special programs organized in collaboration with the accelerator partner, Google for Startups.
“This year’s edition of the program was a kind of experiment where we wanted to provide deeper and individualized support to each team. We learned a lot that will help us make the next editions of the program even better from year to year, and we were lucky enough to work with the best teams so far. We are especially glad that for the first time in the history of the program we had 50% of startups with women in the founding team, of which two such teams are among the winners,” said Vukasin Stojkov, co-founder of Startit and program director of Startit Rasta.
As part of a broader initiative called “Starting Drivers”, which empowers individuals and organizations to drive positive change in their environment, MTS startup acceleration is a program designed primarily for technology entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of developing their business idea, Kurir reports.
