Techcelerator financially supports Romanian technology start-ups through its strategic partner, GapMinder Venture Partners BV, co-financed through the Competitiveness Operational Program.
International students, members of AIESEC, whom want to actively use their expertise, can apply on the platform of the association at opportunities.aiesec.org, in order to choose a Techcelerator start-up within which to have the internship. The four activity areas for which they can apply are: graphic design, web development, marketing/PR and business development. The internship lasts two months and can be extended as duration.
Presently, eight students from six countries (Brazil, Denmark, Egypt, Italy, Portugal and Turkey) have been accepted for the program. Out of these, one Italian student has begun his collaboration with the start-up BAAM on the area of business development. Another four students will be starting their internship stages in January 2019. Techcelerator handles the matching process between the applicants and the start-ups.
”This partnership is a first in Romania, as youth NGOs have had collaborations only with corporations so far, not with accelerators. We are happy to provide valuable additional resources for the start-ups at Techcelerator to use, with the purpose of helping them to grow faster on international markets also in areas which sometimes are neglected, but which play an important role for a business. Additionally, we believe that the start-ups’ enthusiasm goes hand-in-hand with the energy of the students willing to live this experience, so there are only benefits on both sides. We are decided on upgrading to develop even further this collaboration also for Romanian students whom we are waiting for with open arms to join us”, declares Cristian Apostol, Project Coordinator at Techcelerator.
In its turn, Ciprian Craciun, National Partnerships Director at AIESEC, added: "We are very excited about working with the Techcelerator team. From the very beginning, they have shown they are very open and proactive in supporting this project with the start-ups participating in the accelerator. This partnership marks an important step in our mission to develop the entrepreneurial environment in Romania by linking Romanian start-ups with young entrepreneurial enthusiasts to grow local businesses”.
The start-ups included in the current acceleration batch of Techcelerator are:
-
BAAM, real estate marketplace based on AI and Blockchain which engages real estate customers to buy properties overseas timely, wisely, securely and seamlessly.
-
DCDN, decentralized content delivery network that creates a transparent and equitable ecosystem for content sharing and revenue distribution.
-
FormulaDB, database and low-code platform allowing business users to implement their own data-intensive applications. No programming skills are required.
-
uVibe, real time city guide for the choosing the best places in town based on social signals.
-
LiveCare, hardware and software solution for monitoring the hospitalized patients, in real-time. LiveCarePatch is wireless, small, water resistant, easy to wear and designed for daily life use.
-
Beez, free and fun application that helps the users to start saving right away and which will allow them to achieve financial stability through budgeting planning and tow-click investing, effortless.
-
XVision, automated x-ray analysis application that can output a diagnostic for a common x-ray by providing a heat map of areas of interest in the image.
-
Stockberry, artificial intelligence and advanced statistics app that computes a relevant sentiment indicator and evaluates the risk of your stock or cryptocurrency portfolio.
The eight start-ups will benefit of a first round of investments worth 25,000 Euro from the strategic partner GapMinder. The new edition of Techcelerator started in November, has a 10 weeks duration, and it takes place in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca, with the help of 50 Romanian and foreign mentors. Techcelerator includes intensive coaching sessions about business, mentoring, specific evaluation of the start-up ecosystem and marketing services. Start-ups will also have access to international communities for development and exposure to the global market. At the end of the acceleration program, the participating start-ups will publicly present their projects at a Demo Day event to get supplementary investments.
The AISEC project consists of internship programs through which foreign students can join local business teams, and the ones from Romania can apply for similar work experience abroad. Since 2016, AIESEC matched more than 130 entrepreneurship oriented young people from 30 countries with various start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses in Romania to support and develop the business environment in the country.
