2024, April 11
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NU and Stanford Expand Opportunities for Startups in Kazakhstan and CA
2024, April 11
Share this articleFor many years, NU has been pursuing a strategy of encouraging innovative start-ups and high-tech projects to stimulate the development of a knowledge-based economy.
One of the significant achievements in this area was the signing of a partnership agreement in 2022 between NU and Stanford University as part of the StartX acceleration program, which expanded opportunities for startups in Kazakhstan and Central Asia.
“The StarX partnership with NU is helping us find startups from the region, come to the Silicon valley and find a home here. Currently, we have 6 companies from Kazakhstan in the admission processes, and we are looking for more startups that will be able to come here. StartX and NU is the only ecosystem relationship that StartX has other than Stanford and we will continue to expand and build this relationship into the future, ” said Darsh Mann, Head of Business Development and Partnerships at StartX, on the sidelines of the18th Asian Business Conference in Berkeley, Calif.
The main event of the Conference was the panel session "Emerging Technologies and Entrepreneurship in Central Eurasia", which was attended by prominent representatives of the region's innovation ecosystem. Among the panelists was Doszhan Zhusupov, CEO and founder of the startup CerebraAI, which specializes in the use of artificial intelligence in stroke diagnosis and was the first to be selected for the StartX accelerator in 2023. Following the accelerator, Cerebra studied the experience of the Stanford University Business and Medical Schools and is still receiving assistance in establishing contacts with leading US medical institutions. The startup was created by graduates of several Kazakhstani universities, including NU.
“We talked about ecosystems of startups in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, how you can enter the US market from our region. In our case it was through the help of NU and Jas Ventures, we got into the StartX program at Stanford and they offered us to move here and we based it on the SilkRoad innovation hub, ” noted Doszhan Zhusupov.
For more than 10 years NU has been supporting and encouraging startups whose innovative and high-tech initiatives are aimed at supporting the development of a science-based economy. For instance, NU offers its own startup support programs through NURIS initiatives, including the ABC INCUBATION incubation program and the Quick start acceleration program, to create favorable conditions for startups to participate in international program initiatives such as the StartX Stanford accelerator with the support of Astana Business Campus.
