Seven students of Tomsk and Tyumen State Universities passed the qualification rounds for the first entrepreneurial apprenticeship in the TechnoSpark startups that will result in the defense of their graduation papers.

The entrepreneurial apprenticeship is carried out in partnership between TechnoSpark and Tomsk and Tyumen Universities within the program that started in February 2019.

The students will be trying their hand at launching a real startup based on a verified hypothesis in one of the hardware industries: robotics, photovoltaics, genomics, personalized medicine, new materials, pilotless transport, and others. The apprenticeship in TechnoSpark startups in Troitsk (Moscow) will last 9 for months. In addition to accommodation and transportation provided to the program participants by the company, the apprentices will receive a monthly salary of 20 thousand rubles to cover their current personal costs. The students will eventually defend their graduation work presenting the successes and failures they experienced in the course of building a new startup.

The selection stage of this apprenticeship program was effected through a series of business games “Build a Company. Sell the Company” that drew more than 300 participants over the period from March to May 2019. Sixteen finalists were invited to an interview, and seven of them were accepted to the Graduation Paper as a Startup Program, and one student made it to the Business Debut Program. Three students are coming to Troitsk from Tyumen, and the rest four are coming from Tomsk.

“The TechnoSpark apprenticeship program is seeking students that can both understand the processes in technological entrepreneurship and make first steps in this direction. Statistically there are only 0.01% of such people in Russia. It is only in our program that students can get an opportunity to resolve real challenges faced by existing startups and make a significant contribution to the development of this business.”

In the next academic year, TechnoSpark and the mentioned universities are planning to continue the program attracting even more participants.

Source: Media Office of TechnoSpark
Date: June 12, 2019