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Serbia’s organic food startup at Slush 2016

OrganicNet is this year’s representative of Serbia at one of the world’s largest events dedicated to innovations and startups – Slush Conference in Finland, November 30-December 1, 2016.

This company from Novi Sad was among 13 startups which took part in the local competition for Slush 2016 in September, organized for a second consecutive year by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland and the Innovation Fund from Belgrade. The competition offers local startups the opportunity to present their innovations to local and international mentors and qualify for training and participation in the annual Slush conference in Helsinki. The finalists also included SEEZER and CWool Box.

OrganicNet is a knowledge-sharing platform and a marketplace for organic food that connects producers and consumers. It facilitates direct communication between producers, who can create their online stores, promote and grow their businesses, and consumers, who can easily find and order products directly from trusted producers, creating a new market and value network and improving the organic food discovery and delivery. It is a fully functional and operating platform, flexible, scalable, and adaptable across multiple devices, currently available in Serbian and English.

“As a developing startup, we see this as an opportunity to get useful advice on how to further develop our product and spread to other markets. We will have a unique chance to present our solution to a huge audience that recognizes the importance of our platform and a healthy lifestyle. Our goal is to connect with all those who support the development of the organic movement and promote the values and principles of organic production”, says Dragana Grbić of OrganicNet.

Slush Conference, the two-day conference designed for startups, has grown in just a few short years to 15,000 attendees and 1 million live stream viewers. Close to 2,000 startups, 800 venture capitalists, and 700 journalists from over 100 countries come to Slush to drive business.

“The global demand for innovations and start-ups is growing and so is the Slush Conference. It has outgrown its Finnish origins and turned into a regional, Scandinavian and European event. It is important for Serbia to be part of the European innovative community on its way to the EU. I am glad that, together with the Innovation Fund, we can lend a helping hand in this process“, says Pertti Ikonen, Finland’s Ambassador in Belgrade, at the reception held yesterday to honor the winners.

Serbia’s last year’s representative in Finland was Neopix, a young digital creative agency with offices in Niš and Belgrade, focusing on web and mobile technologies.

„As the faciliator of the local qualifications, we will continue to encourage Serbian startups to come forward with their ideas and get the opportunity to get the taste of the big world of competition and investors that is awaiting them out there. Innovative startups like OrganicNet are important players in the ecosystem that we are building in Serbia,“ says Ivan Rakonjac, Interim Managing Director of the Innovation Fund.

More about OrganicNet / https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1-8uhC8KRo

More about Slush 2016 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_CpNaCvaoc