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Home – BioSense Accelerator

Startups from the 2019 Biosense accelerator raised more than 140k EUR over a period of 6 months.​
Become part of the Biosense accelerator and be part of the ecosystem with successfull AgTech startups such as Agremo, Agromineral, Agrivi.
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How it works

BioSense provides AgTech entrepreneurs and teams with an intensive personalised 8-week acceleration program. The teams will receive individually tailored support from selected international and local mentors. Together they work on customer development, fine-tuning value proposition, focusing on marketing channels and tools that will drive customers to your doors. Teams will also gain access to BioSense resources, niche expertise, network and community. The best part of it: there’s no equity or strings attached to the participation in the program.

Biosense accelerator value chain
Biosense Accelerator Timeline

Community

We’ve built up a vast network of mentors to support you through your AgriFoodTech journey on both technical and strategic issues. Expand your reach and learn from an all-star lineup of CEOs, founders, and industry experts.

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Who are we

BioSense Institute, a Research and Development Institute for Information Technologies in Biosystems, focuses on multidisciplinary, game-changing and needs-driven research and disseminating it to a global ecosystem of forward-looking stakeholders. BioSense cross-fertilizes two most promising sectors in Serbia: ICT and agriculture.

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What we offer

A 3-month, immersive program for your early-stage and growth-stage AgTech startup from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, or Montenegro, where you will gain exclusive access to in-house tech support, introductions to the right people, coaching by international and local mentors and trainers, and a chance to achieve market readiness with early traction/ proof of concept.

Acceleration & Innovation

Fast-track, grow and scale your AgTech FoodTech venture with bespoke training and access to mentors and industry experts

Tailored Support

Tools and tailored support to help businesses innovate, differentiate and compete successfully in the global market

Industry Specific

In-house tech support: demo farms, nanomaterials, low cost miniature sensors, eo imagery, robotics & big data

Thriving Community

Exposure, jam-packed agenda with facilitated workshops, and plenty of time for networking & relationship building

What we look for

You have...

• An already formed founding team,
• A clear business idea or concept,
• A pitch-deck (10 pages/ slides max).

Your idea is...

• A disruptive solution applicable in agriculture,
• Improvement of existing solutions,
• Or the digitalization of previously analogue solutions

The project leading to this accelerator has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme “ANTARES” under grant agreement No 664387.

This program is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The content of this website is the responsibility of BioSense Institute and does not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

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Mentor

Petar Savić

Supreme Factory

Petar Savic is an entrepreneur and founder of a London based Virtual Accelerator for international startups called Supreme Factory and Co-Director of Startup Grind London (Powered by Google for Startups) the world’s largest startup community designed to educate, inspire and connect entrepreneurs.

Mentor

Milovan Dekic

User Research Lead @ Nordeus

Milovan is one of the pioneers of applying user experience research on mobile games in Southeast Europe. He started his career by teaching Sociology at the university. His interests mostly revolve around understanding human behavior from the perspective of behavioral economics. He published papers in journals mostly focused on behavioral game theory, analytical sociology, and the history of social thought. Milovan was the first user experience researcher in the world dedicated to the massively popular football management game Top Eleven. Currently, he is a user research lead @ Nordeus.

From the first days of spending his time with users and players of mobile games, he is focused on what should be the best approach not just to understand users, but to utilize the learnings to meet the business needs.

That leads him to engage with Design Thinking and Research Sprints. By using Design Thinking and promoting User- Centered Design, he developed a holistic approach much needed to business decision making: starting with understanding user problems, trying to engage others in solving these problems, and finally testing business ideas to check if they make sense from the user perspective.

He summarized his over 6 years long experience in a book on Design Thinking (2020), that he coauthored with Marko Jevtic.

Mentor

Aleksandar Sabo

Experienced agtech entrepreneur founder, serial entrepreneur and developer. Very well known in the local ecosystem.

Mentor

Nikola Gavrilovic

CFO @ MVP Workshop

Nikola Gavrilović has been in the field of IT business for more than 25 years.

He is an innovative engineer, founder and director of successful companies that have been operating for many years.

He founded the first company less than two decades ago with his wife, focusing on improving and developing the family and socially responsible business model, adapting it to the business models and markets in which the other companies he manages participate today.

Mentor

Aleksandar Bijelic

CEO @ MVP Workshop Studio

Aleksandar Bijelic is the Chief Executive Officer at MVPW Studios, in charge of supporting companies to transform into the Web3 world through defining strategy and supporting the execution of strategic projects while leading end-to-end Web3 project implementation.

While serving as a Chief Digital Officer in MK Group, he defined the strategic digital transformation roadmap for Serbian largest private equity company.

Throughout his career as a top management consultant, Aleksandar has worked with AT Kearney, Boston Consulting Group, and Deloitte in defining digital strategies, conducting organizational transformation and restructuring while increasing operational efficiency for numerous organizations across South East Europe in areas of financial services, retail, manufacturing, telecommunications, oil, and gas industry. Aleksandar is supporting the development of innovation and startup ecosystem in the SEE region, serving as a President of the Board for the Serbian Venture Network and Belgrade Venture Forum, a leading organization, and platform for connecting investors and fast-growing companies.

Mentor

Dušan Basalo

Founder & CEO @ Talks and Folks

Dušan Basalo is the founder and CEO of Talks and Folks. He has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Serbian Association of Managers for the past 6 years, and the creator of SAM's mentoring program, as well as SAM Academy.

Dušan is also a co-founder of company Atria Group and Chief Digital Learning Officer at Generation Zeal.

Throughout his career as a trainer and coach for the past 18 years, he has certified in a large number of methodologies and tools that he uses in his work, including certification for Persona Global training methodology (San Francisco), psychometric tools SHL (London), coaching skills (Erickson College Vancouver), and NLP trainer (IN-NLP Hamburg) and many more.

Most of Dušan's clients are teams and individuals from the highest level of management in over 180 companies. In late 2015, Dušan received the award for Best Young Manager in Serbia (the second award).

Mentor

Nemanja Živkovic

Founder & CEO @ Funky Marketing

Nemanja Zivkovic is the Founder of Funky Marketing, a Strategic Marketing Advisory Firm that helps solution providers generate revenue from the modern-day B2B buyer through better positioning, planning, and execution.

Nemanja is a marketing expert who has built and led revenue-focused marketing strategies for various companies for the last decade, from startups to enterprise solution providers in the technology sector.

He’s also a host of the Funky Marketing Show and Co- Founder of Business Talks Network, a fastest-growing professional networking community gathering 1000 business professionals in Novi Sad, and a big fan of Motown, GTA, and funky music in general.

Mentor

Miloš Matic

Partner @ ICT Hub Venture

Miloš Matić is Partner at ICT Hub Venture, first privately owned venture capital fund in Serbia. Miloš is in charge of funds operations, portfolio management, mapping and sourcing of startups from the SEE region. As a part of ICT Hubs’ ecosystem, Miloš is in charge of building the entrepreneurship community and mentoring local startups. Miloš is also Ambassador and Advisor for Global Startup Awards competition and entrepreneur himself. He previously worked for UNDP and Microsoft Development Center Serbia.

Mentor

Marko Moracic

Founder @ Vitriol Consulting

Marko has been working in organizational development over 20 years. He is an expert in management development, organizational assessments and growth. His areas of expertise also include organizational culture, team dynamics, team forming and conflict resolution, social entrepreneurship and social impact.

He began his career working as a project manager in IT industry, developing decision support systems, HRIS, and management analytics. Over 5 years he has been developing local self-governments; he assisted municipalities and cities design, plan implement and monitor projects. He led teams of over 20 people and overseen HR departments. He designs and implements change in organizations, including management assessments and development programs.

He is very passionate about social change and social entrepreneurship, and found himself in various roles including: mentor, coach, consultant, advisor, trainer and facilitator.

Mentor

Paul Bostick

Founder @ Tech Bear

Founder and owner of TechBear, an American IT startup company in Novi Sad, Paul brings expertise to the table in all things sales, marketing, and combating inevitable failures. A company that has tripled in size the last year, Paul wants to offer guidance to others interested in any aspect of entrepreneurship, American business culture, and creating success.

Mentor

Nemanja Sladkovic

Senior Associate @ Gecic Law

Nemanja is a senior associate at the Gecić Law in Belgrade, specializing in Corporate / M&A, IP and ESG Law.

Prior to joining Gecić Law, Nemanja worked with another region’s leading law offices. He advised clients and took part in some of the most notable and prominent international investment projects in the Western Balkans region. Nemanja is mostly focused on his work on transaction structuring with risk mitigation assessments, but he also provides counsel on IP, labor and ESG topics. Nemanja is a crucial member of the ESG team at Gecić Law that takes into account the long-term impacts of corporate policies and investments, helps businesses avoid risks and navigate reporting procedures. He has been part of various seminars and conferences such as the CSR & ESG Forum, UN Global Compact Annual End of Year Panel discussing key legal concerns with the likes of experts from PWC, Ernst & Young, Deloitte and many others. Nemanja’s engagement with the startup community includes developing a Startup guide focusing on legal matters that aims to assist entrepreneurs to establish their foothold in the market. His involvement in the Biosense initiative is further proof of his willingness to share his knowledge and expertise but more importantly assist newcomers.

Nemanja is a member of the Belgrade Bar Associations.

Mentor

Christoph Berndt

Partner @ KP Advisory &
Founder & Managing Partner @ Strategy M

Christoph has more than 15 years of experience in finance and management, as CEO, CFO, CRO and financial advisor to international companies across industries. Particularly in the area of corporate finance, Christoph excels on deal advise and core transaction work such as M&A advisory, valuations, post-merger integration, purchase price allocations, business planning and modeling, as well as corporate restructuring and reorganization For several years, Christoph is advising and mentoring startups across various stages of development and domains, mainly in the areas of business models, financial planning, funding and investment readiness. Over the last couple of years, Christoph has developed his role as angel investor and is an active member of the DSI angel network. He is member of the investment committee for the Mini Grants program of the Innovation Fund in Serbia and serves also as external evaluator for business and investment related topics in EU- funded projects. Besides, Christoph mentors in the ‘Proof of Concept’ program of the Innovation Fund as well as in the BioSense Accelerator for AgriFoodTech.

Christoph gained deep insights into the Serbian startup ecosystem and presented valuable findings and conclusion in his study ‘Startups in Serbia: a glance at the startup ecosystem in Serbia’, which was published in July 2019 Christoph has been engaged by the German-Serbian Chamber of Commerce in Serbia as Senior Advisor since 2018.

Mentor

Darko Mandić

Happy Honey

An entrepreneur and founder of Happy Honey startup/brand. Built a successful business in the agtech sector and spread in 11 different markets/countries.

Mentor

Dunja Radulov

Sprinting Software / Women In IT

Dunja Radulov has spent the past 10 years working on content, product marketing and growth for companies ranging from early stage startups to established SaaS companies. She is currently leading marketing at Sprinting Software and coordinating the Biznisnova Women in IT conference. In her free time, Dunja enjoys helping people grow - she was a mentor in the Share your knowledge mentoring program and is looking forward to being one of the Startup Weekend mentors.

Mentor

Ivana Pajčin

EcoFert

Ivana Pajčin is a PhD student and Research Assistant at the Department of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Engineering at the Faculty of Technology Novi Sad. The research in the framework of her PhD thesis has involved investigation of microbial-based biocontrol agents for suppression of different plant pathogens. She has a significant experience in the field of biocontrol agents' production, where the idea has raised to apply some of the microbial strains with high antagonistic and biocontrol potential as active components of the microbial fertilizer with an improved formulation.

Mentor

Marko Gaćeša

AlchemyCloud

Marko is a serial entrepreneur and cloud technologist with deep experience in the chemistry industry. As a technology executive, Marko has led large engineering teams, built scalable cloud platforms, and developed clinical chemical analyzer software applications used worldwide.

Marko now serves as Chief Product Officer and President Europe at Alchemy, the enterprise SaaS company modernizing how the $1T specialty chemicals industry develops and commercializes formulas.

Mentor

Milan Trbojević

Founder & CEO @ FT1P

Cyber accountant and tax advisor specialized in IT sector and small business. Born in Belgrade year when Red Star conquered Europe and the World. He is the founder and owner of bookkeeping agency Knjiški moljac and initiator of blog ft1p.rs. The inventor of the cure for bureaucracy in Serbia and creator of the board game FT1P.

Mentor

Agnes Asodi

Project Manager in Hooloovoo startup. Vast experience in team and project management and team building. Worked in umerous startups and agencies.