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Business

Business is Go for Fellowship graduates

01 February 2012

 

Two Lithuanian graduates have moved to Teesside to take advantage of the DigitalCity Fellowship Scheme, a business support initiative designed to help the development of new businesses and talented entrepreneurs.

Both Justinas Lasevicius and Edvinas Sersniovas graduated from UK Universities; Edvinas studying BSc Pharmacology and Business at Kingston University and Justinas undertook a BSc in Finance at Lancaster, and after hearing about the scheme from friends decided to move to the North East to turn their business idea into a reality. The recommendation, from friends who had been a part of the Fellowship Scheme the year before with the company Pinevio.com, and who have now moved out to Silicon Valley, highlighted the potential success that could follow.

'We were really inspired by their success, and jumped at the opportunity to move to Teesside', says Justinas. 'We had been working temporary jobs in different places around the UK while we searched for a business incubator, so we had a hard time communicating before we came across the Fellowship.' In December 2011, they began working from the Phoenix building, based on the University campus, on ‘Transfer Go’, a project which aims to develop an online system for cheap and efficient international money transfers.

Their business idea was born out of their own experiences of being foreign students, and the frustrations they had when needing to send and receive money to and from their parents back in Lithuania.

Edvinas said: 'We found the banks were expensive for students and took time. One transfer would cost over £20 just to send and would take 2-3 days to deliver. So we got talking about ideas after being introduced by a mutual friend.'

Despite having only just begun their six month Fellowship, they are instantly feeling the benefits of the scheme, which includes financial support for living costs and expert advice from mentors. 'We were really impressed by the quality of the mentoring here at Teesside, with people like Mark Hill helping us solve problems and Mark Elliott connecting us with people around the University. The scheme standard here is high and gave us a grant to help us get started,' said Edvinas. The simple fact of finally working in the same room together has allowed a much more fluid working relationship, with Justinas having the financial and business knowledge, and Edvinas concentrating on technical issues and web development. Their hope is to be as close as possible to having a product by the end of the six month scheme, but understand that this is an environment in which they can learn a lot and afford to experiment new ideas with a solid support network around them.

Justinas said: 'Knowing that we don’t have to worry about income is helping us to progress a lot faster. As neither of us needs a part time job, it means we can put all of our focus into Transfer Go.'

They plan on testing their system with Lithuania to begin with, but are ambitious in applying their idea to other countries and, as Justinas explains, they are determined to make the effort in order to help the business succeed:

'We are hoping to take advantage of the number of students coming over from China so we have both started to learn Chinese. One day, we hope our system can help students all over the world.'

Fellowship fact file: Fellowships aim to help develop business ideas and give successful applicants a platform on which to start-up their own business. They are available to individuals and teams: • with an original idea for an innovative product, research project or intellectual property • who reside in the North East of England • who have graduated from university.

A support grant of £4,000 per person is offered for living expenses whilst you develop your idea and each project has access to 4 days mentoring support by industry experts. Apply online at www.digitalcityfellowships.org. or call 01642 384334 to discuss the scheme further.

The European Union part financed this project with £1.9m from the European Regional Development Fund 2007-13 through Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Distributed by the European Commission, the European Regional Development Fund promotes growth, competitiveness and employment in the region. Investment in innovation, enterprise and stronger support for business start-ups are the cornerstones of DCLG’s ERDF programme up to 2013.

The ERDF Programme is bringing over £300m into the North East to support innovation, enterprise and business support across the region and will help create and safeguard 28,000 new jobs, start 3,000 new businesses and increase the region’s productivity by £1.1bn per annum.


ERDF


 
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