Photo: EPA | |
The world’s leader in software – the Microsoft Corporation – seriously intends to contribute to the development of Russian information technologies. The company has announced that n 10 years, it intends to pay grants to 100 Russian startup companies. This is part of Microsoft’s long-tern agreement with the Russian Foundation of the Skolkovo center of innovative technologies.
Microsoft plans to invest from $ 30 thousand to 500 thousand in each project. The money will be paid year-by-year. The first grant has already been given to the young company “Pirate Pay” from the city of Perm. The company was formed only half a year ago and is working on ways to protect copyrighted content from piracy. Usually, means to fight with Web piracy are limited to tracing and finding violators. The new technologies of the “Pirate Pay” allow blocking the illegal content preventively. However, the program sill cannot be released, because it needs some improvement.
“I hope that $ 100 thousand, which the Microsoft has paid to the Perm company, will be quite enough for them to finish their useful work,” Microsoft’s President in Russia Nikolay Pryanishnikov says.
“The grant is meant for a company to create some product – a prototype of a future more large-scaled project, so that the company might have something to show to potential investors to convince them to invest in this company. Today, a good, properly-thought idea which needs only money to be implemented, is rather rare – but with the Perm company, it’s just the very case.”
To receive financial help from the Microsoft, a company must be not older than 3 years, its money turnover must not exceed $ 500 thousand, and, of course, it must develop software. The main thing, still, is that its workers must be goal-seeking, businesslike and risky to a certain extent – and, of course, they must know much about the latest computer technologies. Fortunately, Russia can boast of many such young people.
Besides the “Pirate Pay”, another four projects made it to the contest’s finals. One of then may probably also receive a grant. The Director of Microsoft’s Seed Financing Fund Mikhail Tsygankov says:
“There was a project for Web developers, which suggested some means to simplify their work. There was a project of joint social cooperation within large organizations. There was another one which had to do with a city’s infrastructures – especially, with car parking, and another, of ways to better process big amounts of data.”
Mikhail Tzygankov also says that today, about 1.5 young Russian companies are candidates for the Microsoft’s grant.
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