Congratulations to the winners!

We are looking for end-to-end cases for large and small retailers that will increase their sales volumes and benefits consumers by providing seamless shopping experience. Go through “being merchant” journey, think out-of-box about solutions that will unite all brick-and-mortar and e-commerce elements into one.

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We need examples of integrated solutions to establish and deliver new revenue sources of (new or modified business models) for banks and merchants based on the concepts of “Open API”, “Personalization”, “Digital ID”, “Big Data”, “Robotization”, “Artificial Intelligence”, “Ecosystems”. We are open to concepts in B2B, B2C, G2B, G2C and P2P.

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We are looking for concepts, solutions, products and services that can remove barriers and create new opportunities for using corporate cards. In addition, we are open to the concepts of improving the efficiency of using corporate cards in the existing environment.

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We are looking for human-focused services and products which solve for a specific problem which exist today in the context of daily consumers’ lives. Your solution should deliver on convenience, optimized customer journeys and human-centered experiences.

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The main prize of 5 million rubles was awarded to Ubirator, a startup that pitched an online service for collecting and removing recyclable waste in the Solutions for Business brief, uniting in one ecosystem those who want to dispose of such waste and those who transport and process it.

Three winners were awarded 2 million rubles each to develop their projects:

• The APIBank team in the New Sources of Income for Merchants and Banks brief, which proposed an online tool for small and medium-sized businesses to quickly create their own bank. 
• The SWiP team in the Contextualisation of Services brief, which pitched a facial recognition payment technology. 
• The Dasha.AI team in the Solutions for Business brief, which developed a voice assistant to assess the effectiveness of bank service by phone.

Competition participants also received special prizes from project partners**:

• FlyPenny was awarded a trip from Sberbank to one of the world’s innovation centres. 
• Credit Bank of Moscow awarded 3 million rubles to Gmoji to develop its project. 
• An initial proposal to invest $100,000 in the project (fast track type selection) was made by The Untitled to the SWiP team. 
• Heedbook will be entitled to complete an individual acceleration programme with the Skolkovo Foundation and attend any specialist international conference in 2019. 
• Ubirator was invited by IIDF to join its Sales Start Workshop acceleration programme. 
• Dasha.AI was awarded an internship and future employment as part of the new BCS Fintech division at the Skolkovo innovation center from BCS bank.

Tatiana Zharkova

Tatyana started her banking career in 1994 at Stolichny Savings Bank, later she joined “Russian Standard” bank. In 2002, she participated in the creation of “Rusfinance Bank”, in 2005 was appointed Director or Retail Banking Products and Member of Board Committee at AKB “Menatep Saint Petersburg” in Moscow and Member of Board Committee. In 2006, Tatyana was appointed Director of Retail Business at KMB-Bank. From 2011 she was Chairman of the Board at Volkswagen Bank Rus. In 2014-2016, she was Senior VP at Globex KB ZAO. In 2016, Tatyana joined Ak Bars Holding as Deputy Chairman of the Board, in 2017, was appointed Strategic Development Councilor and is part of the Strategic Committee.

In October 2017, she was appointed Managing Director of FinTech Association, created with the participation of the Central Bank of Russia. The main objective of the Association is the development and introduction of new technological solutions in order to ensure the development of the Russian financial market in alignment with the Association strategy.

Uttam Nayak

Uttam Nayak is the Senior Vice President for Digital Products. In this role, he oversees the development and commercial deployment of Visa’s push payment solutions to accelerate the digitization of cash. Fueled by a passion for the future of digital and mobile payments, coupled with nearly 20 years of experience at Visa, Uttam has led the development and deployment of Visa Direct and mVisa to enable real time payments over mobile phones between consumers and merchants.

Uttam joined Visa in 1996 and has led a number of successful programs including spearheading the strategic and tactical introduction of many innovative card products, introducing new payment alternatives and launching payment initiatives catered to emerging markets.

In a prior role as Group Country Manager, India and South Asia, Uttam played a leadership role in introducing multiple electronic payment products and solutions to help establish Visa’s leadership role in all of the eight South Asian markets and drive adoption. One of the most notable initiatives during his tenure was the innovative payment solutions using the India’s biometric authentication platform, Aadhaar.

Uttam has held several key regional and global roles with Visa in functions including business development, product development and innovation, technology and security and client relationships. Prior to Visa, he worked with the technology applications division of the US Department of Energy.

Uttam holds a Master of Science in Computer Engineering from the University of Texas, USA, and an Engineering degree in Electronics from Bangalore University, India.

Bianca Lopes

Naturally curious and fascinated by humans, Bianca is a Serial Entrepreneur and an experienced speaker in Data, Identity, FinTech, Entrepreneurship & Diversity. She has been a banker and worked in partnership with over 40 large financial institutions to reshape their human approach to technology by using the power of rethinking identity.

She developed and cultivated her love for and expertise in biometrics as the CIO (Chief Identity Officer) of a leading biometrics company, where she ran product management, marketing, business development and client success as the person responsible for its Financial Services strategy. And immediately fell in love with identity and its catalyst power.

Bianca’s entrepreneurial approach to these challenges over the years has earned her recent accolades as a 2017/ 2018 Top 40 Digital Influencer in Finance by Thomson Reuters and a 2019 & 2018 Top 100 Identity Influencer by OWI, alongside Edward Snowden and Mark Zuckerberg.

Bianca is an avid partner of Visa, with the most recent project – a documental digital about the most promising innovative and disruptive technologies in the planet.

Pavel Novikov

Pavel Novikov as Director of FinTech & Blockchain Competence Center at Skolkovo Foundation is engaged in the commercialization of innovative startups for the financial sector, and also helps corporations and venture funds to find and invest in unique Russian Hi-tech projects. Among the clients and partners of Skolkovo are top-10 Russian and foreign banks. Pavel Novikov is the founder of the Skolkovo Business Club, which includes the 50 most promising Skolkovo startups with a total annual revenue of $ 77M in 2018.

On the basis of Skolkovo in 2016 Pavel Novikov launched the Blockchain Technology Center, which was recognized as the best Russian center of excellence in blockchain technologies according to the Russian Association of Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain for its contribution to the development of blockchain ecosystem in Russia in 2018. There are 21 startups in the center, at the moment, with more than $ 15M raised investments by residents.

Pavel Novikov is a member of the Expert Council for Financial Markets in the State Duma and the Center for Regulatory Competence (Fintech Group) based on Skolkovo. Pavel is a member of the Startups Advisory Board: Talkbank, Shield and Loyken.

In 2013-2015, Pavel was on the position of Director of Cloud & Mobility Business Development at Softline in Latin America. At the end of 2014, Softline entered the top 5 VMware partners in Argentina and became the fastest growing partner in LATAM.

In 2006-2013, Pavel developed business at Softline Russia and the CIS in the sphere of virtualization and private clouds in close cooperation with such industry leaders as Microsoft, VMware, Citrix, Parallels, Dell, Netapp, EMC, Veeam, the annual volume of transactions was $ 50M.

Pavel graduated from the Higher School of Economics, EMBA in "Business Leader of the Future" program with the diploma theme: "Innovation ecosystem - the basis of the economics of the future." He has certificate with honors in "Financial Markets" from Yale University and certificate with honors in "Corporate Finance" from Higher School of Economics. Earlier Pavel graduated from Bryansk State University where he majored in Physics and Informatics.

Sergey Negodyaev

Sergey Negodyaev is Director of Portfolio Management at the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF). Sergey has more than 10 years investment banking experience in direct and venture capital investment with MDM Bank, Eurasia Capital and Run Capital. He has been involved in a large number of venture deals and contributed to the across-the-board development of portfolio companies from profit generation and seed investing through to acquisition. Sergey is a board member of several Russian and international companies.

Konstantin Siniushin

Konstantin Siniushin is an eminent Russian serial IT-entrepreneur, managing partner of the Untitled ventures, co-founder of several well-known companies, which were sold to strategic investors: Software AG, EMC Corp. and EPAM Systems. Russian business-angel in the sphere of Internet and mobile solutions, who is placed on top of venture rating systems.