BAKU, Azerbaijan, Jan.5
By Tamilla Mammadova – Trend:
Despite the pandemic, 2020 was very successful for Georgia's Agency of Innovations and Technologies in terms of the attraction of funding by Georgian startups from large international venture funds, Trend reports via Georgian media.
The agency's management says this makes the Georgian innovation ecosystem more attractive and interesting.
The agency also allocated grants for the startups development within the program. The agency revealed 40 start-up companies in the contests that received grants in the amounts of up to 100,000 lari ($30,612) and 8 – in the amount of 650,000 lari ($198,983).
“In 2020 for the first time in the region the 500 startups acceleration program was launched in with the support of Bank of Georgia. Two companies - Cargon and Cardeal - will travel to Silicon Valley in the summer of 2021. Now we are collaborating with 15 promising companies trained by foreign specialists,” Avtandil Kasradze, Chairman of Georgia's Innovation and Technology Agency, says.
In his words, the agency financed projects worth 6 million lari ($1.8 million) in 2020, private investments poured in startups amounted to 25 million lari ($7.6 million).
Apart from that, the agency launched a program to retrain 3,000 high-tech specialists.
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