Small Grants Competition

The Ministry of Economy of RA, Enterprise Incubator Foundation and Microsoft RA in the frames of Microsoft Innovation Center project announce Small Grants Competition with the goal of developing innovative IT ideas and solutions, as well as projects directed to the satisfaction of IT market demands.

The competition renders various and furnishing IT proposals and solutions for real- life problems facing Armenia today (social, healthcare, educational, trade, and other spheres), using Microsoft tools and technologies.

Main requirements

The competition is based on team work. The team must consist of five or less persons. The team members cannot introduce any operating enterprise or be an operating staff of an enterprise.
Each team must have a mentor.
Participating teams must propose problems regarding Armenian economy (social, healthcare, educational and other spheres) or real-life issues and give IT solutions to those problems. Further marketing plan for the presented projects is encouraged.
The implementation of suggested solutions must be based on Microsoft tools and technologies.
The necessary financing for the implementation of suggested solutions should not exceed AMD 1 mln. (including VAT).
The participants can present solutions, exceeding AMD 1mln, if they have already gathered other resources for extra financial support.

Requirements for competition confidentiality

All members of the competition organizers and the jury will sign an announcement about not revealing the information. It will operate during the competition, as well as another year after announcing the final results. Attached is provided the pattern of the announcement about not revealing the information.

Competition organizers will practice necessary efforts for confidentiality of the projects of the team members.

If there is additional need to familiarize with any of the applications, competition organizers must beforehand have the agreement of corresponding applicants. At the same time the competition organizers are not responsible for damages and loss of any applicant.

Competition rounds

The competition consists of the following main rounds:

Application recruitment
Preliminary assessment and best teams selection
Presentation delivering
Final presentations, assessment and awarding

1. Application recruitment
For participation the team must present the following documents:

Application form, filled properly and signed by team mentor,
Suggested project description, filled properly by presented sections.
The applicant must present particular description for each suggestion when more than one suggestion is presented. One copy of all the other documents must be presented.
Team members CV, one page each.

Application must be submitted to Enterprise Incubator Foundation by the following address: room 311, Hovsep Emin str.123, Yerevan. An additional copy must be sent by mail to info@eif.am.
Applications must be in Armenian.
Applications not containing all necessary documents and/or not corresponding obligatory demands will be denied.
The application deadline is November 20, 2009.
For additional information contact EIF office by the following number: 21 97 37.

2. Preliminary assessment and selection
The jury will assess the applications during a week after the application deadline.
The assessment will be done taking into consideration to the following fundamental criterion: contemporaneity of suggested problem for Armenia, its mass nature, innovative nature/originality of suggested solution, practicability and professional qualification of the team.
The jury will select maximum 8 best proposals. Selected teams will be notified through e-mail.

3. Presentation delivering
The selected 8 teams will have approximately 10 days for working properly on their projects and delivering short presentation at finals.
The teams must form their presentations around the themes and questions which are given below in the bases of assessment criteria.

4. Final presentations, assessment and awarding
The Finals will be held on December 11, 2009.
At finals the teams will do short presentations to the jury and will try to support their business suggestions, and there will be questions and answers with the teams..
The duration of each presentation is limited and shouldn’t exceed 15 minutes.

Presented projects will be assessed by the jury according to the criterion given below:

N	Assessment Criteria Assessment	Assessment points
1.	Contemporaneity, popularity of the problem	0 - 20
2.	Practicability(realistic, substantiate) of the suggested solution/project	0 - 20
3.	The innovative nature of suggested solution/project	0 - 10
4.	Project implementation plan including deadlines, estimate, implementation peculiarities , etc.	0 - 20
5.	Team mentor’s and member’s expertise and qualifications	0 - 10
6.	The possibility of project marketing	0 - 10
7.	Presentation quality	0 - 10

Three teams, having the most points, will be recognized as winners.

Awarding
In the result of the competition 3 best teams will get each till AMD 1mln. (including VAT) to implement their project.
The grant will be given through the signing a corresponding grant contract which will regulate and will supervise interrelation between the sides.
Besides the granting, winners will be given certain working area and computer equipments at Microsoft innovation startup center to implement their projects.

If team wishes and, in the presence of marketing potential of implementing project, the team will be given support by Microsoft Innovation Center in the process of startup enterprise foundation.

Supervision of project implementation

According to the grant contract the teams will present periodic reports about the timeline and resources used for the project implementation. At the end of the projects final reporting will be done, including the whole process of project implementation, results, as well as further extention and perspectives.

Application Form (Armenian)

Project Description (Armenian)

Տnnouncement about competition confidentiality (Armenian)