SAP Startup Factory’s Demo Day and the opening of The Factory by BANA

On January 20th, BANA organized the demo day of the acceleration program “SAP Startup Factory” and the opening of a new co-working space called “The Factory by BANA”.

The graduates of the acceleration program pitched their ideas and received certificates for completing this journey. The participant startups were: Rumors Monitoring, HopShop, GOTCHA, Jobgrade, Schedex, SmartPush, Earlyone, Payva.

During the event, the participants were welcomed with opening speeches of Frank Hess, (Head of Cooperation at the EU Delegation to Armenia), Rafayel Gevorgyan (deputy minister of Economy of the Republic of Armenia), Klaus Schimmer (Open Innovation Chief Architect at SAP), Andrej Bievetski (the managing director of SAP Labs CIS), Manana Melkonyan (Program Director of BANA) and Wilhelm Hugo (EU ITTD Team Leader).

BANA Director Grigor Hovhannisyan says. “This was a great experience for our team and the ecosystem overall. SAP Startup Factory is the first of its kind in Armenia and the region overall. The next batches will be more productive and intense since we learned a lot and will be constantly improving to have bigger results. Very exciting that SAP Startup Factory by BANA will also be open for startups outside of Armenia, this will make Armenia the regional center for the most innovative B2B startups.”

The 1st batch of SAP Startup Factory brought together top international and local mentors, SAP professionals, leading experts, and a strong network of startup expertise. The uniquely crafted program enhanced each participating startup’s development and constituted successful achievements.

The cooperation of creating this acceleration program between software giant SAP and BANA became possible with the support of EU4Business ITTD project implemented by German Development Cooperation GIZ.

BANA – Business Angel Network of Armenia is the 1st and the most active Angel Network in Armenia. It has a mission to connect leading angel investors from around the world with the brightest Armenian entrepreneurs.

BANA runs many ecosystem-building activities like a business incubator, conferences, boot camps, and various startup events.

SAP is the world leader in enterprise applications; more than 440,000 customers use SAP solutions and services in 180 countries worldwide. In 1992, the SAP SE office was opened in Moscow, now the number of SAP CIS employees is about 1,300 people.

In 2012, SAP Labs opened a research and development center in Moscow, a St.Petersburg division. For more than 29 years, SAP has helped Russian companies transform and optimize their businesses based on innovative solutions. SAP is the only international developer that has its own data center in Russia.

In July 2018, opened the SAP Digital Leadership Center in Moscow. The company actively invests in training, enhancing competence, and developing ecosystem expertise. More than 130 universities in Russia and CIS receive free access to SAP software for educational purposes. Since 2016, 17 SAP Next-Gen Lab centers of innovation for students and young IT professionals have been opened.