#TechFebruary with Artashes Vardanyan

Itel.am starts a new #TechMonth series: at the end of each month, Armenian IT specialists will conclude the month, speaking about Armenian and international tech achievements, as well as gains of their own company.

We conclude technological February with Microsoft Innovation Center (MIC) Director Artashes Vardanyan. The Center organized Demo Day event under his guidance in February.

#TechFebruary in Armenia

MIC Acceleration Program Demo Day took place (full article in Armenian) at Ayb School on February 21 and was attended by over 200 representatives of IT sphere, including potential investors entrepreneurs and representatives of Armenian startup and IT community.

Demo Day isn’t a contest, it has no winners or losers. Startups present their product. Usually, the audience includes people who have interest in cooperating with this or that startup and an intention to invest in it.



6 out of 10 startups established first ties with potential investors and partners within the event.

Demo Day is a good platform to gather IT community in one place and present the latest developments as well.

It’s also important that the interest towards Acceleration Program has risen. Around 10 startup teams were asking on just that day about how and when to apply for participation in the next acceleration phase.

#TechFebruary in the world

Armenians were once again at the top of international technology events in February.

Mobile application Wakie created by our compatriots Hrachik and Tatul Adjamians joined Y Combinator accelerator in USA. I should note that this is a big achievement, as competition in Y Combinator is very strong, and only several dozens out of thousands startups get chosen.



It also became clear that Wakie recently received USD 1 million from various investors and business angels. The weekly indicator of 1 million calls is also characteristic for Wakie now.

Yet another international award was brought to Armenia by Shadowmatic this month. It won in the Best Game Art category within Indie Prize Awards in Amsterdam.


Triada Studio Technical Director Bagrat Dabaghyan at Indie Prize Awards

#TechFebruary in Microsoft Innovation Center

MIC started a program in cooperation with Microsoft and support from Armenian government, which aims to bring up issues for small and medium entrepreneurships (SMEs) in different spheres and offer solutions based on cloud technologies. Those are solutions for CRM, ERP, Productivity, Sales Cycle management, Warehouse management, Daily operations management and several other directions.

Any small and medium business in USA now has different solutions that make everyday tasks easier and manage the routine, at the same time being accessible and allowing the business to concentrate on development more than on everyday duties.

Consider a mobile application that allows to see at what time your hairdresser can take customers, and make an appointment at a time convenient for you. This frees the hairdresser from unnecessary calls and long conversations.

We at MIC try to bring up regional issues for SMEs of different directions and offer solutions for them in cooperation with Microsoft RA at present. We intend to test the solutions in Armenia, later successful pilot programs will be exported with Microsoft’s help to the countries in the region, including Eastern Europe.



There are around 65,000 SMEs in Armenia. Taking into account that around 70% of population uses internet, 45-50,000 SMEs can fall within the target range.

As a result, a small business of about AMD 600,000 monthly turnover can afford a solution to make its everyday work easier by paying, for example, 10 dollars monthly.

We announced that we accept applications for joining MIC team within the program at the beginning of the year. We had around 400 applicants, 120 out of whom were chosen for the interview phase.

We finished the interview phase a few days ago, and we’ll begin working with selected students in March. They will participate in cloud technology trainings for free in MIC, receive consulting and form teams in a short period of time.

We plan to bring up 10-12 issues Armenian SMEs have today, then we’ll assign the teams to develop practical solutions. I presume that we’ll have completed solutions for market testing in about 3 months already.

Narine Daneghyan