Participants of BIT competition attract $25M over two years

Entrepreneurship competition BIT summed up the development of the best projects from two recent seasons. Finalists and semifinalists of BIT-2011 and 2012 received a total of more than $25M in the form of investment and grants.

One of the successful companies involved in the competition, is an English Language Training Service (ELTS) LinguaLeo, which raised $3M from Runa Capital Fund. Runa Capital representatives note that they met with LinguaLeo team at BIT competition.

LinguaLeo has become the most popular online ELTS in the CIS, and it is one of the most promising and fastest-growing Russian startups. The market of online ELTS totaled $1.3B for 2011, and now we have an ambitious but real goal to make LinguaLeo the global leader of the market, - the co-founder and senior partner of Runa Capital Fund Ilya Zubarev says.

BIT competition has also played an important role in the development of Astrakhan company DisplAir, which is the developer of an original device to demonstrate interactive pictures right in the air. DisplAir received a $3.5M investment from the LETA Group Fund and a number of private investors.

BIT celebrates its anniversary season of 2013 (the competition is held since 2003) introducing an important innovation, which is an acceleration programme for the finalists including both remote seminars and a two-week intensive training in Moscow. BIT provides a unique opportunity for startups to reach the next stage of evolution.

Accepting applications for the main federal track of the competition has already been started at Bit-konkurs.ru and will last until the end of May. The finals of BIT will be held at the II Moscow International Forum Open Innovations to take place from October, 31 to November 2, 2013.