Information Day for Presentation of the National Competition on The Project Technostart 2

Information Day for Presentation of the National Competition on the Project Technostart 2 was held in the Large Conference Hall of the university. The meeting was organized by the Ministry of Economy and the Entrepreneurship Department of UNWE. In it took part Prof. D.Sc.(Econ.) Kiril Todorov, Director of the Entrepreneurship Development Institute and Head of the Entrepreneurship Department, the experts from the Ministry of Economy: Mehmet Myuhtar, National Coordinator for the prestigious competition European Enterprise Promotion Awards 2016 and the graduate of UNWE Tihomira Pavlova, Entrepreneurship and Innovations Division.

Prof. Kiril Todorov, Tihomira Pavlova, Mehmet Myuhtar (from the right to the left)

The Ministry of Economy announced a National Competition on the Project Technostart 2 - Encouragement of Innovation Activity of Young People in Bulgaria. The project has an objective to stimulate the Bachelor`s, Master`s or Doctoral degree students as well as those who had graduated their higher education in 2015 or 2016 to start their own business through the non-resource grant provided for them for the establishment of technological companies, pointed out Tihomira Pavlova. The objective of Technostart 2 is to encourage the young people having innovative and viable ideas to realize them and to be promoted their success.

The expert Pavlova specified that in the frameworks of the project a non-resource grant would be provided in the amount of 90% of the total financing or up to 19 800 BGN per each approved business plan. The approved candidates of funding should register their own company for insuring the compulsory own contribution of 10% of the total financing or up to 2 200 BGN per each approved business plan.

In the Large Conference Hall

Tihomira Pavlova explained also the classification of economic activities for the project, types of expenditure, stages and criteria for assessment of business plans, etc. The application deadline for the project and submission of documents is till 17 October and the whole necessary information for participants in the competition can be found on the Ministry of Economy webpage    - http://www.mi.government.bg/.

Prof. D.Sc.(Econ.) Kiril Todorov gave some examples of successful business ideas, “brain attacks” and numerous awards of the Club of Young and Innovative Entrepreneur as he outlined that several of those ideas could participate in the Competition.

 

Participants in the Information Day

The project Technostart 2 is part of the National Strategy for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) 2014-2020. This is the only project in Bulgaria focused entirely on supporting the entrepreneurship at the universities. In March the implementation of contracts concluded with start-up companies on the first project Technostart of the Ministry of Economy announced in 2014 was finished. The establishment of 19 start-up companies of Bulgarian students was financed. According to the statistical data of the Ministry of Economy ten of them are in the sector of information technologies, five – in the manufacturing and four of them – in the sphere of scientific research and development activity. There were opened 28 positions for a job – 19 of them as self-employed persons and 9 – newly employed ones.