Food, fashion and advertising: in which areas do young Russian startups succeed?
Miscellaneous / / February 09, 2022
The platform "Russia - a Land of Opportunities" and the company "Efko" talked about the dream job with 3,268 students: 60% of those surveyed seriously want to start their own business immediately after receiving a diploma. As the main motivation, they noted the desire to create something new. And we will tell you in which areas the younger generation is already successfully developing.
1. foodtech
It is hardly necessary today to explain the relevance of food delivery services. But despite the seeming abundance of proposals, many niches in this area are still open. For example, robotic deliveries or services for clients on a gluten-free diet. FoodTech is not only about its cafe with takeaway food: as in the case of fashion, it is convenient and a profitable way to share your values with the world, take care of the pains of potential buyers and planet.
For example, conscious consumption is an important issue for the developers of the FoodTime project: its creators want to reduce the amount of food waste in Moscow. Many products are sent to the trash on the verge of expiration. FoodTime brings this kind of food to hungry and conscious citizens. To find your match, you need to download the application, find the nearest cafes and restaurants on the map, select a dish with a discount, pay and pick up the order.
It is more difficult to organize a quick snack for those who follow a certain diet due to food allergies. The suffering of such buyers was well understood by Sofya Kanaeva and Ekaterina Salyakhova, the creators of TrolleyX, a service for checking goods for the presence of allergens and harmful substances. In 2020, the girls became SberZ finalists and are now planning to establish partnerships with large grocery chains.
TrolleyX's successor in FoodTech at the finals of the same startup competition a year later was the Yummy Do team. The guys came up with a service delivery of homemade food, in which you can personally choose your own chef: in case you really want borscht like a grandmother or cheesecakes from childhood.
2. Fashion
Zoomers are focused on individualization, and fashion is a tool that can be easily adapted to the requirements of a young audience. Some enter fashion design out of a desire to stand out and love the lucrative arts and crafts, but some startups find a way to share their values with an audience. For example, the clothing customization project Prive, on the one hand, is designed to make the wardrobe of customers a means of self-realization, on the other hand, to draw attention to the problems of overproduction.
For those who hate shopping and are sure that fitting rooms of shopping centers are installed in hell instead of boilers, the Capsula service will be the salvation. It is enough to fill out a questionnaire, pay for the service, and in a day a box with a basic set of stylish clothes will appear at the door. Such a startup cares about the nerves and time of customers, and also about the environment, because a capsule wardrobe is also about conscious shopping and saving the planet's resources.
And modern fashion can take care of health. Dynamic Heels is a project to create shoes with cushioning soles. The developers became finalists of the MIPT student pre-accelerator and during the program managed to find a partner-physiologist, get publications in the media, prepare a patent application and launch sales.
3. Trade and advertising
Progress is driven by laziness and competition, and marketplaces are a space that combines both engines of evolution. It seems that large online markets, about which the stars sing from advertising on TV and on the Internet, left no room for startups, but the creators of KazanExpress were not afraid of fighting the giants. Now there are about 1,700 sellers on the site, whom the company itself trains to work with Chinese suppliers. The peculiarity of the marketplace is delivery in one day. The idea of KazanExpress was born by Linar Khusnullin, a student at Innopolis University, while waiting endlessly for a package from China. The startup decided to combine the affordable prices of the well-known online giant with fast delivery. The plans are to expand the state and enter the federal market.
Competition drives development, advertising stimulates competition. In the modern world, PR marketing is already an art. This area is progressing with every new video, site and collab on TikTok, so young startups full of ideas and creative ambitions are attracted to this industry. For example, students of the Startup from Scratch Minor, organized by the Higher School of Economics, launched the Medium Well Production project. The service offers clients ready-made packages of marketing solutions - from photo shoots, commercials and website design to content creation and professional brand promotion. The portfolio of the guys already has large cases and experience of cooperation with a well-known product brand.
4. edtech
Makeup, video games, memes - parents and grandparents called it pampering, but now many run educational courses and make money on a passion for video games or the ability to make funny pictures. A modern person is constantly learning, so EdTech is a promising area.
There are many areas for development here, from mobile applications to large-scale projects using AR technologies. For example, in the SberZ accelerator, a federal entrepreneurial talent development program for schoolchildren in grades 8-11 and college students, the Virsen team introducedSber named the best technological startups created by schoolchildren and students / Lenta.ru a platform for distance learning for workers in hazardous industries. The project involves the use of 3D graphics and online resources, and this helped Virsen attract the attention of large partners - Kazan Federal and Ufa Oil Universities, as well as the Human Capital Development Agency of the Sakhalin areas.
Projects like Virsen are focused on narrow target audiences, but there are EdTech startups that are designed for the mass user. For example, young developers from Cheboksary created the Smart Bunny Eva voice assistant for children. Bunny will tell a bedtime story, teach you how to brush your teeth and give an entertaining math lesson. With the help of a special application, moms and dads can choose what the child will do with the interactive toy and program Eva's reactions to correct and incorrect answers. The project was presented at the MIPT pre-accelerator "Engineer 4.0", and the developers managed to find the first clients there.
5. Medicine and health
Medicine is an industry for those who want to see that their product is of real benefit. In addition, there are many opportunities for startups in this area, because health care is always relevant: not fashion and advertising are responsible for the high demand here, but the instinct of self-preservation. Technologies for maintaining the body in good shape is a direction worth paying attention to. This is understood by both adult businessmen and aspiring entrepreneurs. Sofya and Maria Lyubimova, the creators of the Domapteka app, are just getting ready for their high school graduation, but have already won the 2021 Sber Student and Sber Z accelerators. Their application will help you put your first-aid kit in order, stop buying unnecessary bottles and throw away expired pills in batches.
Participants of the MIPT pre-accelerator demonstrated the LifeTracker application to the judges. With the help of pulse analysis, it assesses the state of the body in a few seconds. During a start-up support course, young developers agreed to integrate into the meditation service and started a new project to diagnose pets. Another finalist of the same business program was the project Hit To Beat. This is a martial arts simulator that tracks the progress of the user and motivates them to continue training.
Another startup related to intelligent self-diagnosis was presented by Kursk students at the finals of Startup House, an interuniversity accelerator of Innopolis University. MedStart is a site that analyzes your symptoms and gives you a likely diagnosis. Such a service will not replace a doctor, and it will not offer treatment, but it will compile a list of institutions where there are specialists you need.
6. Services
“Everything has already been invented before us” is, of course, a myth. But in order to create a unique and useful item or a promising technology, you really have to think carefully. In the service sector, by contrast, it is not necessary to invent something completely new: take a critical look at what has already been created and improve the offerings on the market. Good service is needed everywhere, it remains only to identify what customers complain about the most, and the demand for a particular service will become obvious.
For example, InSpace Parking is aimed at making life easier for motorists - this is a service for quickly finding free parking lots. The project won the "Engineer 4.0" final and received funding from MIPT for product development. On the same stage, MeetEasy was introduced, a smart assistant that makes online conferencing more efficient, automatically builds a follow-up of the last meeting, highlights the main thoughts and tasks, structures the meeting records according to speakers and topics. A must-have for those who find it difficult to focus on long working calls. Pilot versions of the service have already been bought by large companies.
Among the student startups that sparkled at competitions and grant sites, in the service sector it is interesting looks like a chatbot for ordering TakeCoff coffee remotely — so as not to waste time in coffee shops and pick up a drink on the fly. And so that even eighth-graders can afford it, Deal14, a freelance platform for minors, is also a young startup, a finalist of the SberZ school accelerator, will come in handy.
Pavel Demin, a student at the Higher School of Economics, picked up on the trend of traveling around Russia and launched the Sight Hiker service — the company organizes car, photo tours, and historical tours of Russian regions from local guides.
The service market is one of the most sought-after areas for young startups. According to the results survey, held by the platform "Russia - a country of opportunities" and the company "Efko", 14.6% of future entrepreneurs chose this area for their startup. Slightly fewer votes were received by the area of culture and creativity (11%), in third place were art and fashion with 8%. FoodTech, EdTech, trade, advertising and PR also made the top 10.
According to other survey results, young people are skeptical about the professional knowledge of bloggers and online influencers, almost half of the respondents are concerned about the impact of production on the environment, and the majority of students believe that building a career is extremely difficult. To cope with anxiety and confidently step onto the professional ladder, university students can contact the Centers competencies, where in real communication with experts you can get an assessment of your skills and recommendations for development.