Elevator Lab
A leading fintech partnership program powered by Raiffeisen Bank International and one of the most important acceleration programs in Eastern and Central Europe.
Purpose
Elevator lab, is organized in a competition format between applicants, aiming to engage the actors of the innovation local ecosystem and partnership with startups and fintech’s, with the highest purpose of developing and renewing the banking business model of the future.
Through the program, the interested parties such as startups and fintech’s could escalate their innovative products and services in the entire regional network countries where Raiffeisen Bank operates.
Structure / Organization
Elevator lab program is organized in a competition format. Every year, the program identifies and publishes the areas of interest so it would be possible for the startups and fintech’s to identify themselves and apply to the program.
The program is organized in several steps, where the first step is the application of the interested startups & fintech’s. There is no limit of the applicants, so it is possible to apply as an idea, or a developed product/service or in different stages of the incubating process. The next step is the evaluation phase, where experts with years of experience in the banking sector and with the program, evaluate every idea, product, application. After a thorough evaluation, the potential applicants are chosen to pass to the next step, where they will have the possibility to present their idea/product/service/prototype in front of a chosen jury composed from experts of different areas of Raiffeisen Bank Albania and experts from other countries where Raiffeisen Bank operates.
Benefits
Through the participation, the applicants have not only the possibility to present their idea/product/service or prototype to the jury of bank’s expert, but also the possibility to compete for the winner prices and the opportunity to collaborate with Raiffeisen Bank Albania or Raiffeisen Bank’s from the other countries. One of the major benefits, is the possibility to collaborate with Raiffeisen Bank and prepare a pilot phase (PoC) of the product/service that the applicants present.
Evaluation criteria
Elevator Lab aims to identify innovative products/services and even ideas for which is possible to establish a collaboration, that is why some of the criterions of evaluation are:
Innovation – the innovation value of the product/service/idea.
Escalation possibility – the possibility to escalate the product/service/idea not only in the local Raiffeisen Bank but even in the other countries where Raiffeisen operates.
Business model – the business model and the possibility to analyze the revenues and costs of an idea/product/service.
Team – the team which is working for that specific idea/product/service and their skills to further develop and implement it.