Elevator Lab: Raiffeisen Bank Albania and Kosovo successfully close the program “Regional Challenge Elevator Lab 2019”

On June 13, Raiffeisen Bank Albania has successfully closed the program “Regional Challenge Elevator Lab Albania & Kosovo 2019" in cooperation with Raiffeisen Bank Kosovo. The 15 participating startups presented their pitche before the jury, and the winner was chosen AILand, presented by Gentjan Zotaj, who explained that the application helps clients by simplifying communication with banks by letting customers talk in the way they are used to finance their needs. Meanwhile, second place was won by Qëndresa Hoti, from Kosovo, ShefNoMore which consists of online payments. The main focus is primarily the bars and restaurants, where through a bar code, connected to the bar through this application will be paid for what you consume in the restaurant. Third place was won by Alban Afmet with the Squad project, which is a recruitment platform that organizes and automates the recruitment process for a company. Through Squad, any company can limit everything by starting from notifications, testing of applicants, etc.
For the second consecutive year, our bank organized this program, which opened the second round of applications on May 7th and during 3 weeks call of application on all interested, start-ups, etc. to apply their ideas and solutions to 6 areas of interest and beyond. During this period, various introductory activities were organized at various Universities in Tirana as well as during Startup Grind Tirana.Present at the final event were present the Chief Executive Director of Raiffeisen Bank Albania Mr.Christian Canacaris and the Chief Executive Director of Raiffeisen Kosovo, Mr.Robert Wright.
In his greeting speech, Mr.Canacaris said,”Elevator Lab is a fintech partnership program, the biggest one in CEE, running in its third batch now since it started at 2017. Committed to the innovation to best serve our customers, we are presenting this program for the second year, this time to both markets Albania and Kosovo after a very successful first round during 2018. This is a great opportunity to a group-wide partnership, that we are very pleased to give to the regional community in these two countries. Raiffeisen Bank in Albania is in continuous digital transformation and we will always support technology projects that will help in improving the service to our customers and our performance as a bank.”" The Elevator Lab program, powered by Raiffeisen Bank, is the biggest corporate fintech partnership program in CEE. The program is looking for innovative fintech solutions in order to jointly develop tomorrow’s banking business. Once selected the fintech/startup community will get a chance to scale their business here locally with RBKO and RBAL and potentially within the whole CEE region where Raiffeisen operates. From our last year’s Elevator Lab challenge in Kosovo, we have initiated successful partnership with the winner AR Vision in RBKO”, said during his speech Mr.Wright.