A group of young representatives from the IT sector are planning to develop mobile applications and other technological solutions for the most diverse of problems ranging from renovating one’s apartment to the provision of financial information, from a new approach to parking cars to conquering the global market through games. And these are not all simply ideas.

On March 25, at one of the meeting rooms at the Tufenkian Hotel, the 10 young Armenian participants of the Technology Goes Beyond Borders: Yerevan-Ankara project were given the opportunity to present the esteemed jury and all other interested audience members with their startup ideas, the success they have already achieved, and their upcoming actions to develop their companies further.

The jury, which consisted of well-known professionals in the sector, was impressed with the enthusiasm and creativity shown by the young participants. One of the main objectives of the event was to guide the young entrepreneurs by asking questions and providing advice.

The list below names each of the interesting startup ideas presented and the bright people behind them. 

• Tigran Gevorgyan. A game called “Dare Me” which is a mobile version of the well-known game “Truth or Dare”
• Arbak Martirosyan and Sargis Sargsyan. 3D-programming of the “Nucleus Game”
• Arthur Karoyan. A mobile game called “Cubway” with 55 levels,
• Narine Hovhannisyan. A mobile application to develop tourism using Beacon technology
• Margarit Margaryan. A unified virtual platform that will include financial information on banks and other financial institutions
• Harutyun Harutyunyan. A mobile application that allows drivers to find the best places to park their cars
• Shushan Aspaturyan. A “motivational” mobile application that allows users to set themselves various goals and achieve them with the help of the app
• Gegham Jivanyan. “Skycryptor” – a program that allows the encryption of user data in the cloud as a secure solution
• Vahagan Hovhannisyan. “Home Planning” – a program that allows people renovating their homes to connect with professionals specialized in home renovation.

You can learn more about the ideas presented by watching the event video.

Emin Okutan, co-founder of Turkey-based Viveka, watched the presentations online and joined the event via video feed. During the 4 months of the project, Emin Okutan worked with the young entrepreneurs and provided advice on how they can become more competitive. 

The event was also attended by a representative of the US Embassy in Yerevan, who emphasized that the Embassy is proud to finance such projects and congratulated the young entrepreneurs on their innovative ideas and their encouragement of entrepreneurship in Armenia.

The startup entrepreneurs considered their participation in the Technology Goes Beyond Borders: Yerevan-Ankara project to be very important, saying that they gained lots of knowledge and learned new skills while developing their business ideas.

“My participation in this project was very helpful from the point of few of coding and designing games. Although I had quite a bit of experience in this area as my profession, I didn’t think much in the past about who my users would be. After participating in this project, I began to pay more attention to who the users are and what needs and preferences they have,” said project participant Arbak Martirosyan.

“From a professional point of view, the project put me in contact with international experts and I learned a lot from them. Most importantly, I understood how a startup idea can be turned into reality step by step, and how I can achieve success,” said Narine Hovhannisyan, another project participant.

The participants noted the importance of providing IT professionals with the necessary knowledge and education, which will lead to the development of many innovative startups.

“I got the opportunity to network with new people and get feedback on my startup idea. In Turkey, I was amazed at how the information technology sector was supported by the state policy. In Armenia, the main problem for the development of the IT sector is that it is growing spontaneously and there are no educational institutions – and even those that exist provide low-quality education. The sector depends on a few individual coders and their own initiatives,” said another project participant, Gegham Jivanyan.

Participants from the PJC’s previous IT sector project were also an important symbolic presence at the event.

The Technology Goes Beyond Borders: Yerevan-Ankara project builds on the success of the first Technology Goes Beyond Borders project (February-May 2015) by the Public Journalism Club and Microsoft Innovation Center in the framework of which 6 startup teams from Armenia and Turkey were engaged in an acceleration program at Microsoft Innovation Center (Armenia). This project was cofounded by the US Embassy in Armenia and the European Union.