On 8-10 March 2019, a start-up weekend was organized in Novi Sad within the Pilot Project GROW Accelerator. The event attended by 68 participants was organized by the Business Incubator Novi Sad and the Development Agency of Serbia.

During the start-up weekend, the participants were organized in 11 teams with 12 available mentors. With the help of mentors, these teams developed their ideas during the event, improved them and prepared for presentation. As a result of the three-day work, 27 business ideas were presented, which competed for the first three places according to the committee’s assessment.

After very good presentations of business ideas, the three-member committee, which also included the Director of the Department for International Cooperation in the Development Agency of Serbia, Ana Žegarac, had the task of selecting the best three business ideas.

The committee decided the third place goes to IMOGEN - Business Scaling Assistant. The idea behind this platform is to help businesses keep their procedures in one place with the template offered by the platform.

Second place was shared between two teams, Koumna and SafeOn. Komuna is a four-member team which presented a platform for second-hand clothes, and SafeOn had a solution reagrding security, and it is based on production and distribution of GPS bracelets.

The committee decided that the winner of the competition is the idea KNJIGAPRICA.COM, a platform for sale of audio books.

The Pilot Project GROW Accelerator is implemented by the Development Agency of Serbia in cooperation with the Business Incubator Novi Sad. GROW Pilot Project is implemented within the Project “Developing accelerators to provide better access to innovation finance for SMEs – ACCELERATOR” financed by the European Commission, within the Danube Transnational Program.

The overall objective of the ACCELERATOR Project is to improve access to financial resources for innovation by improving the institutional framework and relevant policy instruments through the development of practical solutions for acceleration services.