MEGA Accelerator Finalists: Five New Ideas for Shopping Malls

Following the results of the pre-accelerator, nine projects made their way into the final part. On the example of some of them we will tell about new technologies and solutions for shopping centers.

700 people showed up for the qualifying round of MEGA Accellerator 2, which united in 275 teams. The leading cities are Moscow and St. Petersburg. We took projects in three directions: MEGA-space for meetings, MEGA - interaction with visitors and MEGA - an automated back-office, and the second was the most popular. Nine finalists showed promising projects and received admission to the internal accelerator: these are three weeks of intensive refinement and testing of the solution under the guidance of mentors and experts and, as a final, launching a pilot in MEGA and the main prize of 2 million rubles.

The projects of the finalists fit into the concept of MEGA shopping centers - a space for meetings and socializing, a place where you can get out with your whole family, for a whole day, with colleagues and friends, to relax and to have a good time. We want to introduce you to five of them.
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VR in the mall: Hexa 3D content workshop

Hexa is a solution for creating 3D content using artificial intelligence algorithms. With regard to trade, it allows you to make 3D-models for various e-commerce sites.


Hexa service developed by the same company. Due to the introduction of AI algorithms, creators managed to automate and personalize content creation:

• Increase the value of each 3D model, customizing it for each user and improving monetization.
  
• Automate the creation of 3D content, replacing people with machines and reducing the amount of time, money and skill sets needed to create each 3D model.
  

In some subcategories, we only need 2 photos to make a 3D model and reduce the cost of creating content by 99%.

Why is it MEGA

Hexa gives you the ability to create, scale and integrate 3D content, both online and offline, on all platforms. This will potentially increase sales and attract new customers to the physical and digital space of shopping centers.

MEGA Accelerator is an opportunity for our company to gain recognition in the Russian market and to interest new online trading sites in the possibility of a qualitative improvement in the visualization of their content.

Hexa is no stranger to e-commerce. Its customers include major industry players, including Alibaba, Walmart, JD, Rakuten.

Now the company is developing at the expense of its own funds. During the existence of the business, the owners have attracted investors several times: in April 2016 - Samurai Incubate (Israel) (amount - 100 thousand dollars), in March 2017 - HTC (amount 50 thousand dollars), in August 2017 - Seed UK angel ($ 1 million).

Effective and inexpensive training: chat bot Beesender

Beesender is a program for automating communication with employees and customers using instant messengers, social networks and chatbots. The program has three packages: Customer Center, Marketing, HR Bot.

The author of the product is the Belarusian IT company Altaras, which specializes in automating the processes of working with clients in large companies.



Beesender embeds communications (for example, work with appeals, lead generation, conducting micro-trainings, polls or advertising games) into the company's business processes. The built-in designer allows you to create bots without programming, so any company employee can make a chat bot.

Why is it MEGA

At the pilot project stage, startups will implement Beesender HR Bot. This product is designed to configure chat bots for training, testing and employee surveys.

In each company there are trainings on which everyone wants to learn, and there are trainings for which people have to literally drive people. The latter are usually associated with safety issues, internal regulations and regulations. One of these MEGA trainings will be transferred to instant messengers.

Chat bot will benefit both employees and business. The first will be able to get new knowledge and take tests in a convenient format for them - in messengers, which are already used dozens of times a day. The company will be able to effectively manage the educational processes of thousands of employees: their own and tenants.

Participation in programs like MEGA Accelerator, on the one hand, helps to better understand how to develop and promote your product. The organizer of the program, the company GVA, gives cool mentors and experts, to get to which is just so almost unreal. On the other hand, this is a great opportunity to enter the Russian market. By and large, both the MEGA shopping centers themselves and their tenants are our target customers.

Beesender sales have just begun. Among potential clients of a startup are big financial, retail and telecom companies. The target region for 2017-2018 is Russian-speaking countries. Beesender is already used by several banks, retail chains, car dealerships and an online store.

Since its opening, the project has been funded all this time at the expense of its own funds.

Automate HR: Vera Robot Recruiter

Robot Vera is an automated personnel officer. The project emerged as a result of the pivot of the first startup of the team - Stafory, which was a marketplace with a commission monetization scheme, where employer companies place vacancies, and freelance recruiters select personnel. In May 2016, one large retailer placed an order for the selection of 100 storekeepers - but no one took it up, because it looked too time-consuming. Then the founders of the startup had the idea to automate basic and routine tasks: searching for resumes and calling candidates to save recruiters time. The result was a robot Faith.



Vera handles new vacancies from the service: looking for a resume on job sites, calling the candidates and conducting an initial interview with them. If necessary - Vera can conduct a video interview. Thus, the hr-manager of the company receives feedback only from targeted and interested candidates, significantly reducing the time and costs of the company in the initial selection.

Why is it MEGA

As part of the test, Vera will search for staff on work sites with outgoing calls, as she does in the standard way. After the first test results, it will be decided what the robot will eventually do.

MEGA and IKEA are large players who have expressed the need for staff recruitment: there are about 100 current vacancies on the career portal. For Robot Vera MEGA, Accelerator is an opportunity to launch a pilot project and promptly assist the company in finding personnel. Shortage of employees is an acute problem for a business, which causes it to incur operating losses.

Now the main customers of Robot Vera are large companies that constantly need employees, such as MTS, Rostelecom, Burger King, PepsiCo and others. In addition to them, Vera successfully works on the side of medium business: she was looking for both programmers, eyelash extension specialists, and accountants.

The creators of the Robot Faith attracted third-party investments: the Internet Initiatives Development Fund invested 67 million rubles in the project.

Digital instead of gaming: children's center "Ligrenok"

Digital "Lygrenok" is a new modern children's center, which uses a variety of forms of activity with digital devices. In "Ligrenka" every child can get acquainted in elementary forms with the technology of computer design and modeling, design and programming. All these technologies are mastered in a game format using mobile devices.


The digital developer is the company Abspantera. The previous development - LigroGame - develops the research competencies of preschool children and children of primary school age based on the principles of the theory of solving inventive problems. The skills and experience gained while working on LigroGame will come in handy in Ligrenka.

Why is it MEGA

The first pilot in MEGE will support the format of a children's center with various thematic workshops and programs, as well as free play activities in activity centers, where the main tool for learning and activities will be a tablet or laptop.

Our project considers MEGU as a modern space not only for citizens' leisure, but also for development, where, from an early age, we offer the younger generation a certain level of culture and technology, allowing children to discover a new level of opportunities - those offered by the digital world and economy. We do not plan to make children dependent on the virtual world and digital technologies - we offer them constructive ways of working with technologies that will “manage” this world and create these worlds.

As a rule, professionals and parents impose restrictions on children, which are more associated with low awareness of the resources of using modern technologies in the practice of children's activities. This is the so-called generation gap, which needs to be compensated by other projects, where conditions are created for constructive activity with digital devices.

We are interested in the concept of development of MEGA as a cultural space in the city. We are taking part in the accelerator for the first time and we hope to get productive experience and skills in large projects.

Currently, the project team together with its buddy - Alexander Tomkevich, Anastasia Kreposhinoy and coach Yulia Brovkina is planning the first profile of a startup in MEGA conditions.

For the pilot Digital Lygryonok as trainers of master classes and additional programs, we attract students of pedagogical specialties - the future specialists of modern education. For them, it will be a good professional experience in using modern technologies in practical activities with children.

The project exists at its own expense.

Where to go: Altair VR virtual planetarium

The virtual planetarium Altair VR in VR glasses allows you not only to plunge into the virtual space, but also to recreate any scenery in the digital reality. In fact, this is a new way of learning in an attractive and entertaining way.


Its developer specializes in mobile planetariums and has been looking for a way to improve the quality of sessions for a long time. This is how Altair VR appeared.

A virtual planetarium is an evolution of the mobile planetariums market. It combines the quality of stationary, mobile mobility and a sense of the full presence of virtual reality technology.

Why is it MEGA

A virtual planetarium will help to turn MEGA into a single space for meetings and communication.

Participation in the accelerator is an opportunity to dive into the ecosystem of large interesting shopping centers and work with various segments of visitors in a highly competitive environment. And with MEGA and GVA experts.

What's next?

Final teams are already finalizing their projects as part of the accelerator. In December, the best of them will receive the main prize - 2 million rubles.

Accelerator is an opportunity not only to test the project - but also a chance to get comprehensive expert assessment and consultations, make friends who are “in the subject”, acquire useful connections, test the performance of the project and rethink the business. The further fate of the projects depends on their creators. You can read about how the business of the finalists of last year was formed here . And we are already thinking about how the shopping center will change after the launch of new projects.

By launching MEGA Accelerator in 2015, we turned to the spirit of entrepreneurship, which is inextricably linked to the activities of our company, and we believe that the sphere of start-ups is an excellent source of revolutionary ideas.
Milen Genchev, CEO of IKEA Centers Russia.