The second stream of the KDA acceleration program has started

The Baiterek holding and the Singaporean Quest Ventures fund announced the launch of the second stream of the Kazakhstan Digital Accelerator acceleration program, within the framework of which 10 more Kazakhstani startups can receive 50 thousand dollars for their development.

Applications will be accepted from November to December, and the selection of finalists will take place in January 2021.

Recall that KDA is an international accelerator launched within the framework of cooperation between QazTech Ventures JSC (a subsidiary of Baiterek NMH JSC) and the leading Singaporean fund Quest Ventures. The goal of KDA is to promote start-up projects to the global market and develop the digital ecosystem of Kazakhstan. In total, about 200 applications from Kazakhstani and international startups were received for participation in the program, of which 10 finalists received support for the development of their projects in the amount of 50 thousand US dollars.

On November 3, an event for investors and strategic partners was held - the Demo Day of the KDA acceleration program. The Demo Day program included a discussion of the development of venture capital financing in Central Asia, the presentation of projects of startups-finalists of the KDA program and a series of master classes from leading speakers in the field of innovative development. More than 100 international experts, investors and business angels took part in the event.

- We managed to gather more or less mature teams that have been doing this for more than one day, these are no longer students. These are people who have tried to do some projects before. This is encouraging, because earlier projects were much simpler in technology, more focused on some small solutions, the problems of which were difficult to scale. It is difficult for foreigners to further evaluate them and it is difficult to further attract professional venture capital investments in them at the next stages of growth. And for us, for QazTech Ventures, for colleagues from Quest Ventures, the next task is to help our “graduates” to attract already a lot of additional money, because they are all growing and they need financing for someone 300 thousand dollars, who something more, - said the Managing Director of the Baiterek holding Adil Nurgozhin, speaking at a briefing via ZOOM following the results of Demo Day.

According to him, KDA is not a one-time share.

- Demo Day Kazakhstan Digital Accelerator is a graduation day for program participants. This year we have funded 10. They will grow. We will continue to deal with them, show them to other investors. I hope that some of them will attract additional funding. The next year we have already announced the second program. We expect that within the framework of this program we will be able to fund 30 companies three times, - concluded Adil Nurgozhin.