Accelerator Program NINJA – Support from Japan for Serbian Startups

The NINJA accelerator program, a new project of support to startups organized by the Digital Serbia Initiative with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), opens the door to mentoring sessions, potential investors, opportunities for business development and penetration of new markets, the Digital Serbia Initiative announced. Applications are open until October 1 at www.dsi.rs/ninja.

The key goal of the project is to select promising local startups in a mature stage of development which have the potential and capacity to upgrade their operations and expand it to countries where they haven’t done business before with the help of the NINJA program.

The JICA and the Digital Serbia Initiative have launched the NINJA (Next INnovation with JApan) program of acceleration for startups for the first time in Serbia, and this organization is already implementing it worldwide.

– Through this program, the JICA, together with big Japanese companies such as Rakuten Europe, hopes to be able to secure resources for promising Serbian startups that want to expand their operations on an international level and further strengthen the bonds between Serbia and Japan – said the JICA director of the sector for Europe, Tsuchiya Kaita.

Nebojsa Bjelotomic, the director of the Digital Serbia Initiative, said: “According to the annual report of Startup Genome, last year was the most successful one for the local startup ecosystem, as 600% more investments were made in it then compared to 2020”.

The NINJA accelerator is meant for those tech startups which have already gone through an early phase of development, whose solutions are already in the market, which are recording monthly or annual growths and which are now standing before much bigger challenges – they are ready for an investment round and conquering the world market.