O2 Czech Republic has decided to lend its support to unique technologies by launching the new BOLT startup accelerator. BOLT will be based on a different set of principles in comparison to existing startup funds. The main contrast will be in its provision of long-term support. It will not be purely access to financial resources that motivates startups to become part of BOLT. Other motivations will be the ability to trial their ideas and projects while making use of extensive infrastructure and the working environment "ecosystem" with a broad customer and sales base that O2 can offer.
"We've decided not to go down the usual route in which money is the greatest draw for new projects. It often happens that these projects operate ineffectively and fail to deliver any specific outputs. We wish to offer our partners a completely different operating principle and a long-term collaboration. We will primarily select projects whose connection with O2 makes sense business-wise," explains Tomáš Budník, CEO of O2 Czech Republic.
The new O2-backed accelerator goes by the title of "BOLT, End-to-end Startups". It is unique in that in addition to financial support O2 is ready to provide comprehensive operating support and the infrastructure of a company that serves some seven million customers. The advantages of BOLT include the possibility of collaborating with leading Czech telecommunications industry experts, funding for startup project development, communication with the seven-million-strong O2 customer base, an efficient working environment, access to IT and networks infrastructure as well as the chance to become integrated in a working environment with access to existing sales channels (comprising 150 brick-and-mortar outlets, 800 call centre operators and one of the country's most frequently visited websites).
O2's BOLT accelerator will launch on 1 November 2015. It will be overseen by a self-contained management that will evaluate new projects and cooperate with upcoming entrepreneurs in their further development. A new BOLT website has been created: www.bebolt.cz.
Contacts
Lucie Pecháčková
lucie.pechackova@o2.cz
tel: 800 163 342 (800 1 media)
O2 is the largest integrated telecommunications provider in the Czech market. At present we operate close to eight million mobile and fixed accesses, which ranks us among the market leaders in fully converged services in Europe. To users of mobile services in the Czech Republic we offer state-of-the-art HSPA+ and LTE technology. We have the most comprehensive proposition of voice and data services in the Czech Republic, and we actively exploit the growth potential of the various business lines, especially ICT. Our data centres, with total floor area of 7,300 square metres, rank us among the leaders in hosting, cloud and managed services. O2 data centres belong to the few commercial ones in Central Europe to have TIER III certification. With our O2 TV we are also the largest IPTV service provider in the Czech Republic. In January 2014, O2 became a member of the Czech investment group PPF.
