The implementation of the program "KIU Accelerator - 2023" has been completed at the Kazan Innovative University. For the second year now, it has been held at KIU within the framework of the federal project “University Technological Entrepreneurship Platform”, with grant support from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation and the “Platform of the National Technological Initiative”.

Three intense and exciting months of work in the Accelerator have ended. The results of the project are large-scale: 120 teams of startup projects were created and accepted into the startup accelerator. More than 600 people completed training on the educational track. 90 teams competed in the final defenses.

Over the past three months, the Accelerator participants have become friends and learned not only to compete, but also to effectively interact with each other. Young teams learned and adopted experience from more advanced teams. Interdisciplinary collaboration took place, with economists helping other teams work out the economics of the project, and future IT specialists helping humanitarian teams build the architecture of digital platforms and other information technology solutions.

A distinctive feature of the  program "KIU Accelerator - 2023" was its coverage of almost all faculties of the University. This year, for the first time, students from the Faculty of Pedagogy and Psychology, the Faculty of Hospitality and Design, and the Faculty of Linguistics and Intercultural Communications presented their projects.

It should be noted that there has been a significant increase in the quality of development of startup projects; teams more confidently and reasonably proposed tools for using information technologies, including end-to-end technologies in the field of artificial intelligence. In fact, the use of information or cognitive technologies has become standard practice for accelerator projects. In almost all projects, these critical technologies are effectively applied. Thus, the declared specialization of the acceleration program is fully realized in the presented startup projects.

The students coped well with the increased requirements of the program. The examination of projects this year was much stricter than last year. This time the expert commission included very experienced experts - the best representatives of development institutions of the Republic of Tatarstan.

In recent years, KIU has built a unified ecosystem of technological entrepreneurship, covering all areas of university training. Therefore, after the completion of the KIU Accelerator - 2023 program, project teams will continue to develop their projects. Many fourth-year students are planning to begin writing their thesises in the form of a startup in the near future. Others plan to take part in the federal “Student Startup” competition, with the systematic support of the KIU Accelerator team and their mentors.

We wish success to our future technology entrepreneurs and all program participants!