On September 29, as part of the fifth stream of the VC School (Venture Capital School) educational course in Almaty, offline pitching was held for startups - participants in the Smart City Accelerator Almaty program.

Smart City Accelerator Almaty is a joint program of Astana Hub and the Digitalization Department of the Almaty Akimat. The project is aimed at digitizing city services and creating a comfortable urban environment.

Invited guests: Sergey Bogdanov, founder of YellowRockets Group, Dmitry Sutormin, managing partner of YellowRockets.vc venture fund, and Ilya Korolev, IIDF portfolio manager, held a master class for novice investors. The course participants learned what questions to ask in order to quickly and effectively assess the prospects of a startup, its readiness for growth and scaling.

• I was asked about plans for the next three years, as well as about the monetization strategy of our company,” says Dinmukhamed Dzhunusov, founder of the OKOO Ltd project. OKOO is a digital educational platform for schools that simplifies and streamlines the process of teaching computer science. Today, over 10,000 users are registered on the platform.

The founder of the AirFlux startup, Rustam Kabden, in a presentation to investors, emphasized the value of his product: it is health, comfort and safety. The company specializes in the production of multifunctional air breathers at an affordable price.

The team of the QIoT start-up, which is developing in the currently relevant direction of “telemetry”, has developed “smart city receptors” - a solution based on the technology of the Internet of things. This is remote monitoring and data collection for the city. Aigerim Nurmagambetova presented the project of the CBDO team.

In addition, Zhandos Tursumbaev, founder of CTOgram, presented his case of building a successful startup. Today it is already a well-known service designed to solve the problems of car owners and car services: search for free service stations, purchase of spare parts with delivery and at wholesale prices.

• Astana Hub, as the largest technology park in Kazakhstan, has been solving the needs of both parties for several years now. On an ongoing basis, the technopark holds events where technology start-ups can present their products to beginners and current investors from different countries,” says Tanat Uskembaev, director of the office of international relations, investments and exports. — One of these already traditional events is Invest day — a platform where the best investment-attractive technology startups present their business projects to potential investors, business angels and venture funds. In 2021, Invest day was visited by investors from Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Russia, Ukraine, Singapore and other countries.