According to the Startup Ecosystem Rankings 2020 of StartupBlink, Belarus ranks 63 throughout 100 the most technologically advanced countries in the world. The report claims that Belarus has the potential to turn its startup ecosystem into a powerful regional hub because of the high quality of local developers and IT professionals. There are about 1,000 startups in the country, and a lot of them are famous globally, such as Maps.me, Viber, Flo and PandaDoc.

AIN.TECH selected the Belarusian accelerators that support startups in their developing and scaling.

TechMinsk 

Founded in 2013 with USAID support, TechMinsk is the first startup accelerator in Belarus. 

For whom: Tech-based companies.

What is offered: It provides pre-seed and seed funding to and invests up to $50,000 to the best startups selected after the Demo Day of the two weeks program.

TechMinsk-1
Demo Day of the Batch 2019

In June 2019 TechMinsk signed a partnership agreement with Google to support the growing startup industry and tech ecosystem in Belarus. The Google Launchpad program offers young tech companies from Belarus access to more than 600 international mentors and advanced Google technologies. 

Terms of participation: TechMinsk does not take equity from the startups. Application to the Batch 2020 is already closed.

For any further information, you can contact TechMinsk via e-mail.

Portfolio: MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), FriendlyData (acquired by ServiceNow) and PandaDoc.

KrokIT

KrokIT startup accelerator is a project of the “Future with us” business incubator.

For whom: IT startups from the CIS countries with a potential to enter the US, Chinese and European markets.

What is offered: KrokIT offers the guidance of experienced entrepreneurs, founders and experts from various fields for the startups on different stages – idea, MVP, sales, scaling. It also provides investments to the startups of up to $50,000. 

Terms of participation: The startup is able to choose the terms of the participation – to pay a fixed amount of $9,500 or to provide a 3-9% of shares to the accelerator.

Applications for the next program are accepted until September 8 here.

FTH.BY

The first Belarusian fintech and banking accelerator launched by Belgazprombank and Ten-X Company. 

For whom: A prerequisite for the participation is a presence of a well-developed concept, a prototype, alpha or beta versions of the product and first sales. 

What is offered: FTh provides participants with technological and service support from Belgazprombank and accelerator partners. Curator, mentors and experts supervise the startup at every stage of the program. The startup also has an opportunity to launch a pilot project or implement its services and products in the infrastructure of Belgazprombank, as well as other corporations and large companies-partners of the accelerator.

To enter the FTh accelerator you need to leave an application on its website.

Terms of participation: FTh does not take equity from the startups.