SHIFT::Tech to Award $25k to Develop Mobile App in Armenia

Yerevan, Armenia, October 16, 2013 --(PR.com)-- Non-profit organization ONEArmenia is shifting the landscape of Armenia once again. SHIFT: Culture, launched in the spring, invited the global community at large to pitch their wildest idea for reinventing an aspect of the Armenian arts. On their 1-year anniversary they’ve launched SHIFT::Tech, a call for people around the world to submit their mobile app ideas -- and compete to get $25,000 in support to develop them.

Armenia has become one of the leading information technology nations among CIS and Middle Eastern countries. A number of high-tech companies from Europe, Russia, and the U.S. are also operating large development and R&D centers in Armenia. With a booming IT sector, which takes up a corruption-free 20% of the country's annual GDP, start-ups are popping up all over the country. The world’s premier, full-featured mobile photo editor, Picsart, Inc., for example, was founded there and has over 77 million users.

The top five submissions will be invited to pitch their idea to a world-class jury that includes Alexis Ohanian, Matthew Brimer, Raffi Krikorian, Rameet Chawla, and others.

The winner will be connected with Social Objects, a mobile app development company in Yerevan, to turn the idea into a living, breathing software masterpiece. In addition to having a world-class development team build their app, part of the $25,000 in-kind grant will go to marketing and taking the app to market. Portions of potential profits from the winning app will go toward funding ONEArmenia community projects.

“SHIFT::Tech offers enough support for a start-up team to focus fully and realise their app idea and build a functioning, viable product for a big global marketplace,” said Nigel Sharp, founder of LionSharp Solutions--a creative technology start-up. “Awareness of the technology possibilities will improve and hopefully inspire more people to look towards the engineering and mobile development capabilities in Armenia.”

Learn more and apply at onearmenia.org/shift

ONEArmenia is a non-profit that boosts environmental, humanitarian and cultural projects in Armenia. We use crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing to involve anyone with an Internet connection in boosting projects that are geared toward making tangible changes in Armenia. The ONEArmenia network makes it possible to not only raise money for a project based in Armenia as a worldwide community, but to also track the progress of said project with complete access to financial information.