The State Will Help Startups by Financing Companies to Invest in Small Businesses
The state is expanding support for student university startups by creating small business investment companies (SBICs). This was announced by the Deputy General Director of the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs (FIEP) Daniil Kovalchuk at the pitching session of student startup projects within the framework of the federal project Platform University Technological Entrepreneurship Platform (UTPP). The presentations were held at the Startup Village conference of the Skolkovo Foundation.
We are talking about an interest-free loan of up to 1.5 billion rubles for up to 10 years. Investors who come to manage this money should invest their own funds in a ratio of at least one to nine, i.e., the state adds another nine rubles to the ruble of private money, Kovalchuk said. Thus, the top manager of FIEP noted, SBICs are designed to help startups overcome the so-called valley of death - a period when development requires costs, but has not yet begun to generate income.
"Unfortunately, there is very little investment in early-stage startups in our country. Basically, investors go to later ones, where there is already something to scale. The ratio of grants to investments in our country is 10:1. If we take the world experience, for example, there is the opposite situation. Therefore, a tool has been developed that, in our opinion, will help to shift this situation," said Kovalchuk.
Sergey Krzhanovsky, Vice-President for Grants, Expertise and Tender Activities of the Skolkovo Foundation, recalled the already existing cost recovery program for private investors, which can be used in addition to the loan. "At the earliest stage of the life of technology companies, when few people from large funds believe in them, business angels who risk their money come into play. In order to support such people who believe in student startups, the state, together with Skolkovo, came up with this story - we reimburse 50% of the investments of a business angel, an individual, in UTPP projects," he said. To participate in this program, at least 10% of the authorized capital of a startup must belong to a student, graduate student, university, teacher or someone who graduated from the university no more than three years ago.
The federal project University Technology Entrepreneurship Platform helps to unlock the potential of students, graduate students and university staff, as well as to create innovative solutions and bring them to market. During the first year of implementation, the project covered 72 Russian regions. 19 start-up studios have been launched, more than 30 thousand students and university staff have been trained in entrepreneurial competencies, and 170 thousand have improved their projects and business ideas within the framework of accelerators and Entrepreneurial Boiling Points. The Student Startup grant program has been launched; 1 thousand projects have been selected in 2022. The winners receive 1 million rubles each. In 2023, it is planned to support 1,500 startups.