The trend for healthy eating continues to gain momentum and soon on store shelves you will find healthy chocolates and cookies that do not hurt your figure and improve health. One example is chocolate with no sugar and a high vitamin content. This is the project implemented by Yulia Ushakova and Svetlana Savintseva, 2nd year Master students at the NSU Department of Economics, together with Sherzodkhon Mutalibzoda, a graduate student at the Razumovsky Moscow State University of Technology. Their work is based on technology for the production of chocolate enriched with biologically active forms of vitamins B6, B9, and B12 that are qualitatively absorbed by the human body.
Ushakova commented,
Our Master's Program involves working with start-ups with innovative projects. During our 1st year, as interns, we began cooperating with a biotechnology company. I like this job, my area of responsibility is to develop a marketing strategy, everything related to the value proposition and target customers. At the beginning of the journey, it was scary. Now, when a lot has been achieved and learned in the classroom, at Academpark programs, through lectures fr om practitioners, our entrepreneurial skills are starting to produce results.
The NSU Master's Program «Innovative Entrepreneurship and Management», wh ere Ushakova and Savintseva study, is aimed at those who want to «pump» up their practical skills managing an innovative business as part of a start-up or a large corporation. This Program includes a large number of hours of practical experience for students at innovative infrastructure organizations, start-ups, and corporations. Most of the Program instructors are business representatives and entrepreneurs with solid experience in managing companies of various sizes. The final project defense for the «Startup as a Diploma» involves the development of an innovative idea and presenting this as a Master's thesis. The Program is targeted at training specialists for the high-tech economy and developing businesses established by young people.
Irina Gorborukova, Yana Lipinskaya and Arnold Chesnevsky are developing another «tasty» project. They are working on «Production of Innovative Flour Products Using a Hybrid Gel» with the author of the technology already involved in its development. The NSU students were required to help with financial matters, marketing strategy, and formulating a value proposition.
Gorborukova discussed the Project,
Our project is about shortbread kurabie that replaces butter and margarine with a mixture of hydrogel and oleogel that makes it less greasy. Initially, it is aimed at people with cardiovascular diseases, or at an increased risk of these diseases, as well as to maintain the health of these patients. However, we decided not to narrow our target audience and promote this as a less harmful analogue of shortbread cookies that taste as good.
The students emphasize that NSU has played an important role in their projects. On the one hand, it has become a link with existing startups, on the other hand, most of the courses in the Master's Program are focused on creating a business plan, which the Master’s students are developing.
Early we told about NSU students Ghadeer Jdeed and Lina Al Allaf whose project is a winner of Startup Unit Innovation School.
