VSU students were among the most active participants in the SberStudent Youth Accelerator. The accelerator is organised by PAO Sberbank. A total of 18,000 students, postgraduate students, researchers, and lecturers from 600 universities take part in the programme. The programme is most popular among 1st and 2nd year students. This year, the programmes have become international: schoolchildren and students from Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Uzbekistan, and other countries take part in them.
The training in the accelerators takes 8 months. During the first stage, participants will receive online lectures on the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and digital product design. Then, students will be able to choose one of four industry tracks: Artificial Intelligence, Metaverse, Web 3.0, or a social area (science, medicine, education, and art). The tracks include a specialised course on the chosen topic and advice from relevant experts.
At the second stage, participants will form teams (including international ones) and develop MVPs (minimum viable product) of their own projects, guided by mentors. The best teams will present their developments at a Demo day in Moscow, where they will be assessed by representatives of Sber and other major corporations.
Student teams from SberStudent will receive grants from the Moscow Seed Fund, and master’s students will compete for a grant of the President of the Russian Federation.
Sber has been running the free accelerators SberZ and SberStudent since 2021.
