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

On January 20, 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 and Payva.

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During the event, the participants were welcomed with opening speeches of Frank Hess, (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 (BANA program director) and Wilhelm Hugo (EU ITTD team leader).

“This was a great experience for our team and the ecosystem overall,” said BANA director Grigor Hovhannisyan. “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 first 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 the EU4Business ITTD project implemented by German Development Cooperation GIZ.