Digitain organized the second batch of the M1TQ program as a part of its DigiTown project and wrapped it up with the Demo Day. This time the project was co-organized with the Estonian Garage48, which has 12 years of experience in the field.

The Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry, Dr. Davit Sahakyan, was present at the event and delivered a welcoming speech. Dr. Sahakyan thanked for the invitation and expressed his excitement about how the startups had developed their ideas after the M1TQ hackathon and reached this stage.

Garage48’s Co-Founder and moderator of more than 40 hackathons, Priit Salumaa visited Armenia specially for the M1TQ Demo Day. During his keynote speech, Priit Salumaa talked about his entrepreneurial journey, the startups that he has found as well as drew parallels between the Armenian and Estonian startup ecosystems. He also hosted the event and moderated the panel discussion on the topic “It’s Time to Start UP – Estonia’s and Armenia’s Growing Startups”. The panel discussion was held with the seasoned professionals of the field: the Deputy Minister of High-Tech Industry, Dr. Davit Sahakyan, the CEO and Founder of Orion Worldwide Innovations and the General Partner of INSTILL VC, Emma Arakelyan, the CEO and Co-Founder of Orion Worldwide Innovations Armenia, Diana Arzumanyan, and the CEO and Co-Founder of ArmBionics, Marina Davtyan.

The 7 startups that had passed the M1TQ acceleration pitched in front of local and international investors and venture capitalists in order to attract possible investments. As a result of the jury’s votes, MoodMap won the special $10,000 equity-free cash prize from Digitain.

M1TQ partners also prepared very necessary gifts for the finalist startups. Step Consulting will provide free tax and legal consulting to the top 3 startup teams – MoodMap, HandyTalk, and oqni. Gradus Solutions will give a free marketing consultancy to the #FBF and Koriz Marketing will grant a marketing and branding strategy service to HandyTalk and a consultancy for MoodMap. We also had a surprise prize from our panelist Emma Arkelyan. She granted a scholarship to SignLang team to participate in the BAJ Accelerator.

By Summing up the M1TQ Batch 2, the Program Manager Mane Varosyan mentioned, “In my opinion, the Demo Day successfully finalized all the results and hard work of the past few months. M1TQ started back in May, and this time it was held in the form of a hackathon and acceleration. We had more than 350 applicants, and 187 of them attended the hackathon by presenting 50 innovative ideas. 27 of these ideas passed to the next stage. The teams were formed around them and worked for 48 hours to come up with working prototypes of their ideas to present to the jury. As a result, 14 teams were chosen for the acceleration.” While talking about the M1TQ acceleration, Mane Varosyan also noted, “The 12-week intensive acceleration program was implemented by the experienced mentors of Garage48. By the end of the program, 7 teams finalized their startup ideas, developed the products, and are ready to pitch in front of investors. We do hope that the teams will continue their entrepreneurial journey, and we will hear more about their success in the future.”

It’s worth highlighting that Digitain, as an IT company, considers itself accountable for developing Armenia’s startup ecosystem. Within this framework, the DigiTown project was designed, the first component of which is the M1TQ program. Eventually, Digitain aims to make Armenia an attractive technological center for the whole world.

Here you can watch the full broadcast of the M1TQ Demo Day.