Experienced entrepreneurs, founders of successful startups and representatives of venture funds have joined together to help businesses from Yakutia go international. Yakutsk will host one of the first regional programs to accelerate export-oriented businesses financed from private sources.
The main task of Yakutia2World is to help Yakutia's business to expand, go beyond the region to the Russian and international level.
Yakutia2World is a private initiative of IT entrepreneur Arsen Tomsky and Sinet Team. The project is operated by the well-known Russian company YellowRockets.
The program is designed for entrepreneurs who have achieved success in the local market and who are potentially interested in entering the Russian and world markets, as well as for those who already work outside the region and want to expand their businesses. Participants will receive comprehensive support for scaling up business outside Yakutia. The most promising ideas will receive financial support and investments from private investors, as well as access to the professional community of partners and organizers.
Arsen Tomsky, the founder of Sinet Team and inDriver:
- In the foreseeable future, minerals and the extractive industry based on the exploitation of natural resources will cease to play a significant role. The world is moving towards alternative energy sources and new materials. For Russia as a whole, and especially for Yakutia, this is a global challenge and a big problem in the medium term.
We want to contribute to solving this problem. The project division of the Sinet Group of companies, Sinet Spark, has been launching acceleration and investment programs in the fields of intellectual production — IT, cinema, blogosphere, art since 2021. We have initiated the Yakutia2World project for businesses that intend or already export the region's products and services to foreign markets.
We will provide tools and support to entrepreneurs who are ready to scale their business. The Yakutia2World program is an impulse, thanks to which regional businesses will be able to test hypotheses and enter the Russian and international markets in a short time. We will analyze the best practices from all over the country, give methods for generating new ideas, provide mentoring support, tracking and private investments to the best projects. I hope that as a result of the first years of Yakutia2World's work, there will appear a number of new companies that will start exporting goods and services from the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) worth millions of dollars. We will do our best to help them achieve this. Our common goal is to let dozens, hundreds of successful companies appear in Yakutia in the coming years. They will hopefully export their products and services, create a large number of jobs, pay taxes, and attract significant funds from outside to the regional economy. The main directions of Yakutia2World 2021 are: natural products - processing, certification and logistics of wild plants, honey, production of biologically active additives (BAA), everything that helps people stay healthy and strong; inbound tourism — tourist and excursion programs in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), with the exception of hunting; technologies and equipment for the North (tents, sleeping bags, clothing, survival packs, medicines, mobile garages, low-temperature tests, etc.). In addition, special attention will be paid to impact business — long-term business projects aimed at improving the quality of life in the conditions of the North, with the subsequent export of the resulting technologies, inventions, solutions, as well as products and services based on them.
The program is built on the principle of continuous learning and consists of two main stages - an online intensive course and an acceleration program. A limited number of participants will be selected for both stages. About 30 participants are planned for the online intensive course, up to 20 projects will be accepted into the accelerator program. There are two main conditions: a) candidate entrepreneurs must live and work in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) or at least be from it; b) they must be experienced entrepreneurs who have already achieved success in business (monthly revenue is at least 500 thousand roubles).
The online intensive program will take place in a few days and will include webinars, master classes, case analysis, generation methods, testing and launching new ideas. The best projects and participants will continue to work with experts at a special mentoring session and will receive an invitation to enter the accelerator program out of the competition. A detailed program can be found on the official website of Yakutia2World.
The call for applications for the acceleration program will be announced separately, its start is scheduled for the end of March. For 12 weeks, participants will work on their businesses together with experts and mentors to get a detailed scaling plan, tested hypotheses and, possibly, even the first sales. The best projects will receive grants from the total prize fund of 55,000 USD provided by Sinet Spark. The most interesting accelerator program graduate companies will be able to attract seed investments from Sinet Spark and other investors for tens of millions of rubles.
Sergey Bogdanov, the CEO of YellowRockets:
There are many entrepreneurs with global ambitions in the regions of Russia. They have a stable local business, but they don't know where to start scaling. The Yakutia2World program is a set of different activities. Entrepreneurs will be able to invent, test an idea and get comprehensive support: both financial, and, what is sometimes more important, useful contacts. If you are from Yakutia and you already have experience in entrepreneurship, we invite you to Yakutia2World! You can find out more details and apply for an online intensive and accelerator programs on the website yakutia2world.com