Tech Garden and Smart Engineering Group sign memorandum to promote innovation in Kazakh energy sector
The Tech Garden Autonomous Cluster Fund and Smart Engineering Group, one of the leading engineering companies in Kazakhstan providing a full range of services for industrial and civil design, project management and construction and installation works, has signed a memorandum on promoting innovation in the energy sector of Kazakhstan, Tech Garden reports.
Preliminary agreement to sign the memorandum was reached as part of the Corporate Acceleration Week held in South Korea. During the trip, organized by Tech Garden, representatives of the country's oil and gas, mining and metallurgical and energy sectors, the leadership of the Smart Engineering group, the Ministry of Industry and Infrastructural Development and Samruk Kazyna were able to witness the effect of introducing innovations in a number of the most advanced technology corporations, such as Samsung, Ericsson -LG and LSis.
All of these giants use Open Innovation for the corporate sector, which is becoming increasingly popular around the world. With advanced R&D centres and laboratories, many industrial companies are actively attracting startups to solve technological problems of automation and digitalization.
“Open innovation” has become an international trend in a variety of industries. Integration of start-ups in the enterprise’s technological chains makes it possible to make business processes more maneuverable, integrate innovations into the company faster, and receive additional profit without capital expenditures. For example, the Korean company LSis, which we visited and which just works in our industry - the electric power industry - spends $100 million annually on R&D with a turnover of $ 2.5 billion. And this figure of 4% is the average for Korean enterprises and the leading ones in the world,” Nazgul Dzhusupova, director of Smart Engineering Group, said.
The experience of Korean companies using the Open Innovation scheme has also been confirmed by the Kazakhstani power engineers' own experience in introducing new technologies through start-ups.
“This year we have taken the first step towards corporate acceleration. Portfolio startup Tech Garden - CableWalker, fulfilled an order for Alatau Zharyk Company and Mangystau regional grid company to examine two five-kilometer sections of 110 kilovolt lines. The CableWalker team proposed to energy companies a project for remote monitoring and repair of electrical networks using an unmanned aerial vehicle. This is the execution of one of the points of the state program “Digital Kazakhstan” on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles for monitoring and repairing networks,” Alfiya Ilayeva, Technical Director of the Project Management Department of Tech Garden Autonomous Cluster Fund, said.
The pilot implementation as part of corporate acceleration was funded by the Kazakh-American venture fund Tech Garden Ventures, created by the ACF.
“This ensures the rapid penetration of new technologies in such fundamental and traditional sectors of the economy as the electric power industry, the mining and metallurgical complex, and the oil and gas sector. The Venture Capital Fund provided CableWalker investments that allowed for a pilot implementation. At the same time, customers, without wasting time and money on development, can soon evaluate the effectiveness of the solution proposed by the startup,” Sairus Baghai, General Partner of the Fund, said.
The signing of a memorandum between the Tech Garden Autonomous Cluster Fund and the Smart Engineering Group implies further promotion of innovations in the energy sector of Kazakhstan. The signing of the document became possible just as a result of a successful pilot project with CableWalker startup.
Corporate acceleration is a strategic move that helps large companies stay on the cutting edge of progress and remain competitive in a rapidly changing economy.
As part of the Startup Kazakhstan program, Tech Garden has funded 96 innovative start-ups in the amount of about 990 million tenge since 2018.
“Starting in 2020, it is planned to transform the Startup Kazakhstan program from the initial stage of supporting startups to supporting corporate innovative programs, including subsoil users, in the direction Industry 4.0. The program’s focus will shift towards supporting mature projects, introducing their decisions by corporations of Kazakhstan, forming a pool of high-tech companies - world-class suppliers,” Askar Sembin, General Director of Tech Garden, said.
In Kazakhstan, the role of the link between industry and startups - corporate acceleration - is performed by Tech Garden. The Tech Garden acceleration program provides an analysis of enterprise problems, identifying priority tasks, finding startups to solve them, “pumping” startup teams to solve the problem as efficiently as possible, and pilot implementation of the product on the site of your enterprise to evaluate the result.
In addition, the Tech Garden Autonomous Cluster Fund is working to create an Innovation Competency Centre, which will train employees of the mining, oil and gas sectors and the electric power industry in the use of digital technologies and in-depth analytics in production. Together with the resources and potential of the participants in the Tech Garden Innovation Cluster, this can become a real platform for promoting the industry of Kazakhstan to Industry 4.0.
The Autonomous Cluster Fund (ACF) Tech Garden is a state organization established by the Government of Kazakhstan. The Chairman of the ACF Steering Committee is the Prime Minister of Kazakhstan. Tech Garden is a professional environment for the development of innovations demanded by industries and businesses.
