Founder of VKontakte social network Pavel Durov
Kazakhstan citizen Aleksander Kim has received one of 12 grants from the founder of VKontakte social network Pavel Durov and the founder of DST fund Yuriy Milner for his start-up, Tengrinews.kz reports. Aleksander Kim’s project is called to help search, book and organize trips and master-classes from independent experts online on a special website. The platform now covers only two Russian cities, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. The website has 100 registered guides who can run 250 tours in six languages. Aleksander Kim was born in Almaty and studied programming in Saint-Petersburg. He loves traveling and while being a student he started started thinking about ways to combine his job and his hobby. “When I started my Master’s program, I started forming up my idea after the first semester. It was in February 2012. We worked with guides for several months, we gathered partners and launched the project in the middle of May. The idea is to provide a platform to different people who know something interesting about the city and can put together their project in a tour and sell it,” Aleksander explained. Six people are working on the project. The students of Saint-Petersburg State University Aleksander Kim and Aleksandra Skorobogatova are co-founders of the project. The other participants are studying in the same university: Mikhail Vinogradov (marketing), Nadezhda Sinyutina (public relations), Yana Bassyrova (graphic design) and Andrey Keske (web-design). According to Aleksander Kim, the main advantage of the start-up over other equivalent projects is that it is focused on individual guides. The plan is to develop tours in big cities. The project now covers Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, while Kiev and the Baltics cities will be next in line. This contest offers an opportunity for 12 amateur Internet-activists to receive grants of $25 thousand each. It has been held for the last 3 years. This time over 100 inventors took part in the contest. According to Aleksander Kim, they submitted their application last year as well, but back then the idea was too raw. This time the project of the Kazakhstan programmer received a grant along with 11 others. By Assemgul Kassenova
Kazakhstan citizen Aleksander Kim has received one of 12 grants from the founder of VKontakte social network Pavel Durov and the founder of DST fund Yuriy Milner for his start-up, Tengrinews.kz reports.
Aleksander Kim’s project is called to help search, book and organize trips and master-classes from independent experts online on a special website. The platform now covers only two Russian cities, Moscow and Saint-Petersburg. The website has 100 registered guides who can run 250 tours in six languages. Aleksander Kim was born in Almaty and studied programming in Saint-Petersburg. He loves traveling and while being a student he started started thinking about ways to combine his job and his hobby.
“When I started my Master’s program, I started forming up my idea after the first semester. It was in February 2012. We worked with guides for several months, we gathered partners and launched the project in the middle of May. The idea is to provide a platform to different people who know something interesting about the city and can put together their project in a tour and sell it,” Aleksander explained.
Six people are working on the project. The students of Saint-Petersburg State University Aleksander Kim and Aleksandra Skorobogatova are co-founders of the project. The other participants are studying in the same university: Mikhail Vinogradov (marketing), Nadezhda Sinyutina (public relations), Yana Bassyrova (graphic design) and Andrey Keske (web-design).
According to Aleksander Kim, the main advantage of the start-up over other equivalent projects is that it is focused on individual guides. The plan is to develop tours in big cities. The project now covers Moscow and Saint-Petersburg, while Kiev and the Baltics cities will be next in line.
This contest offers an opportunity for 12 amateur Internet-activists to receive grants of $25 thousand each. It has been held for the last 3 years. This time over 100 inventors took part in the contest. According to Aleksander Kim, they submitted their application last year as well, but back then the idea was too raw. This time the project of the Kazakhstan programmer received a grant along with 11 others.
By Assemgul Kassenova