SmiLe collaborates again with one of Russia’s largest business parks

Last year´s Russian companies at SmiLe

This fall – beginning on September 2 – SmiLe’s business coaches will train three of the most promising life science startup companies in Russia. This is the second year that SmiLe has been entrusted with providing expertise within international business development in the AstraZeneca Skolkovo Startup Challenge 2020. Skolkovo is the largest life science cluster in Russia.

AstraZeneca and Skolkovo selected two pharmaceutical companies and one diagnostics company. They will complete an intensive training program, the AstraZeneca Skolkovo Challenge 2020, an accelerator for transforming their business concepts into market-oriented companies. In addition to SmiLe, which provides the lion’s share of the program in question, some of SmiLe’s sponsoring companies, Prevas and Høiberg, will also contribute their expertise.

SmiLe coaches participated as international experts in the accelerator for the first time last year, when the Russian companies traveled to SmiLe in Lund for the first individual coaching sessions. These sessions were then followed up with remote digital meetings, while SmiLe also participated on location in Moscow. This year all coaching will be conducted remotely because of the COVID-19 situation.

“We are extremely proud that once again we will be responsible for the international expertise in business development at the AstraZeneca Skolkovo Challenge 2020. The participating companies greatly appreciated our coaching models, where we use a positive and constructive approach to challenge them regarding issues related to markets and business models starting at an early stage of their development,” says Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO of SmiLe Incubator at Medicon Village in Lund.

For more information, please contact: Ebba Fåhraeus, CEO at SmiLe Incubator +46(0)7340004339, ebba@smileincubator.life