Manufacturer of fruit bars and two online services are winners of the competition

On May 30, Forbes announced the names of the winners of the 3rd startup competition. 11 companies took part in the competition. The most widely represented among them are Internet services, but there are also manufacturers of food products, devices for spatial orientation, and organizers of sports games.

nominated all these companies In November 2012, the competition jury to the semi-finals. Each participant received the right to publish posts on a special blog on our website over the next seven months, where they talked about their ideas, achievements and problems.

On May 23, we summed up the work of startups in real life and on the website. At a closed meeting, the jury selected three leaders. The winner of the competition was Elena Shifrina's BioFoodLab company . 4 jury members voted for awarding first place to this company, 2 voting participants voted for second place and 3 voted for third place.

This company is the only startup among our finalists that produces food products: bars made from nuts, dried fruits and spices without sugar, preservatives and other chemical additives. Elena, the sole owner of the company, invested 5 million rubles from her own funds, and in April 2013 reached operating profit.

The company sells about 40,000 bars per month (retail price about 100 rubles) in Azbuka Vkusa, Globus Gourmet, a supermarket in Tsvetnoy, Pinkberry, Correas and Healthy Food coffee shops.

Second place was taken by Dmitry Petrukhin's DocDoc company . The service received 4 votes for first place, 2 for second and 1 for third. The company has developed a service for finding doctors. Now the resource has a database of 2,500 specialists, each of whom is assigned a rating, which is determined by their level of education, experience and customer reviews. The resource receives royalties from each visit to a doctor that the client finds through the site. In April, the company achieved operational payback; monthly turnover over six months increased threefold to 1.4 million rubles. Petrukhin recently launched a similar resource for finding beauty masters.

The jury awarded third place to the YouDo company Alexey Gidirim and Denis Kutergin (1 vote for first place, 4 for second and 3 for third). The company has created a portal to search for performers of one-time assignments on a territorial basis. In six months, monthly turnover has increased fivefold, and the average bill has more than doubled and now amounts to more than 1,300 rubles. Almost 2,000 active performers use the service as a source of work. The startup delivers goods from 200 Moscow online stores.

received the smallest number of jury votes (1 vote for first place) The Russian Football League , a project to organize an all-Russian football championship for amateur and corporate teams, . Startup leader Alexey Kiselev launched the rfll.ru website in six months and opened a set of participating teams and free players. Today, 800 teams are registered, 75 of which are from Samara. The RFL also agreed with the Russian Football Union to hold the tournament in 2014, as well as with the Championship.com website on an information partnership.

In conclusion, a few words about the fate of the finalists of last season. The winner of last year's startup competition, the company "Vse Svoe" , a supplier of village products, introduced 50 new items into its assortment, opened a branch in Tyumen and in April 2013 sold a controlling stake to the former top manager of Alfa Group and Evraz Yuri Cherchen , who promised to invest $15 million in the business (the parties did not disclose the amount of the transaction).

The silver medalist of last year’s competition was the “Life Button” project , a service for older people. Over the past year, the company has achieved operating profitability; the number of its clients has approached 10,000 people. “Life Button” opened a branch in St. Petersburg, sold a franchise to Perm, Novosibirsk, Belgorod and Krasnoyarsk, and together with IT Co., the Higher School of Economics and the Almazov Center is developing a system for remote monitoring of the condition of cardiac patients.

The bronze medalist of the previous competition, the social alarm clock budist.ru , recently registered its millionth user, took first position in the “Top Free” section of the AppStore and Windows Phone Store in the “Best Ratings” category, and the share of mobile traffic in the project increased from 20% to 75% . A year ago, budist.ru woke up 5,000 clients every day, now it’s about 80,000.

The main and, in a sense, paradoxical conclusion that we made from the results of this year’s competition is that no matter how many technology and IT startups there are among the participants and no matter how original their ideas are, the leader becomes the manufacturer of a relatively simple product who knows how to present it correctly and sell.

The second interesting conclusion is that first place went to the only lady among the competition participants who runs a business on her own (the startup Sunrise , a kindergarten operator that did not make it to the finals, is developed by three partners, two of whom are women).

Another conclusion we made is more like a regret: unlike last year’s competition, a socially significant project, the startup “Tactile Vision” , headed by Denis Petrykin, did not make it into the top three. The developer of devices for orientation of the visually impaired based on tactile sensations managed to test a device for the visually impaired in the form of a belt with a tactile matrix (cost $1000) within six months and realized that the market required a simpler and cheaper modification. Not long ago, preliminary testing of prototypes in the form of gloves and glasses (cost $200) was completed and preliminary agreements were reached with several regional societies of the blind. We really hope that this company will grow into a serious business.

The start date for collecting applications for participation in the next competition will be announced in the fall of 2013.

Forbes Startup Competition: Food Manufacturer Wins Internet Projects