facebook.com\/kgfutureagro<\/a> \u2014 was set up for the program before KG Labs had even launched its own official page.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBy the end of the process, a Bishkek entrepreneur named Tilek Toktogaziev<\/strong> had been selected to represent Kyrgyzstan at the international finals in Athens. A year later, at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Medellin, Colombia, KG Labs received 3rd place for Host of the Year \u2014 its first international award.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n Future Agro Challenge Kyrgyzstan, June 20\u201321, 2015. Source: KG Labs archive<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThe Competition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n The national round at Uglovoy drew applicants from across the country \u2014 including from Osh, Issyk-Kul, and Naryn oblasts \u2014 with twenty projects submitted and evaluated by a professional jury. Competition categories covered nine areas of agricultural innovation: Always Green practices, Food and Health, Agro-logistics, Farmer Income, Education, Agro-tourism, Safety and Health, Packaging, and Other. Applications were accepted in Kyrgyz, Russian, or English; the winning team needed at least one English-speaking member to be eligible for the international round.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
KG Labs framed the competition not only as a talent search but as a diagnostic. As Aziz Soltobaev noted at the time: «Entrepreneurs from multiple regions participated, demonstrating growing awareness of technological innovation opportunities.» Jury member Esen Rysbekov added: «We need significant information campaigns about agricultural innovations and startups transforming the industry.» The subtext was clear \u2014 the competition had surfaced ideas that existed in the regions but had no prior channel to reach a national or international stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n \n 2015 FAC National Hosts<\/th>\n <\/tr>\n <\/thead>\n \n Chile<\/td><\/tr>\n Greece<\/td><\/tr>\n Israel<\/td><\/tr>\n Kyrgyzstan<\/td><\/tr>\n Morocco<\/td><\/tr>\n Pakistan<\/td><\/tr>\n Palestine<\/td><\/tr>\n Peru<\/td><\/tr>\n Russia<\/td><\/tr>\n Sudan<\/td><\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n <\/table>\n Countries hosting national Future Agro Challenge competitions in 2015. Kyrgyzstan was the first Central Asian country to participate. Source: FAC program documentation, KG Labs archive<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\nTilek Toktogaziev and the Greenhouse Project<\/h2>\n\n\n\n Tilek Toktogaziev<\/strong> was in his second year of running a greenhouse business when he entered the competition. His project \u2014 a system for controlling humidity and temperature in greenhouses to reduce the cost of vegetable cultivation \u2014 addressed a specific structural challenge in Kyrgyzstan’s agricultural sector: controlled-environment farming is one of the few ways to extend the growing season in a mountainous country with significant climatic variability, but the operating costs of maintaining greenhouse conditions had remained a barrier to scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe jury selected his project to represent Kyrgyzstan at the Future Agro Challenge international finals in Athens, Greece, in October 2015. Travel and accommodation were funded by UNDP’s Green Village program. At the international level, Toktogaziev also later presented on the prospects of greenhouse business at a competition in Colombia \u2014 the same country where KG Labs would receive its Host of the Year recognition at the GEC in Medellin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Medellin, March 2016: Host of the Year<\/h2>\n\n\n\n The 3rd place Host of the Year award from the 2016 Global Entrepreneurship Congress was announced on March 15, 2016, at the Plaza Mayor Convention and Exhibition Center in Medellin \u2014 the annual gathering of the Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), which coordinates the FAC program globally. The award recognized the quality of KG Labs’ hosting: the organization of the national round, the participant experience, and the standard of applications it had produced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was KG Labs’ first international recognition, and it came through a sector \u2014 agriculture \u2014 that rarely appeared in Central Asia’s then-emerging startup conversation. That a Bishkek-based startup organization had run a credible agri-tech competition drawing participants from three oblasts, selected a technically coherent finalist, and managed the national process well enough to place third globally among ten competing host countries was a signal of institutional capacity as much as of agricultural ambition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n
Event and Award Summary<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n \n \n \n Detail<\/th>\n Information<\/th>\n <\/tr>\n <\/thead>\n \n \n National competition dates<\/td>\n June 20\u201321, 2015<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Venue<\/td>\n Uglovoy coworking space, Panfilov Street 116, Bishkek<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Projects evaluated<\/td>\n 20 (applicants from Bishkek, Osh, Issyk-Kul, Naryn)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Kyrgyz finalist<\/td>\n Tilek Toktogaziev \u2014 greenhouse humidity and temperature control system<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n International finals<\/td>\n Athens, Greece, October 2015 (travel funded by UNDP Green Village program)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n KG Labs role<\/td>\n National host organizer; first Central Asian participant in FAC<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Facebook page<\/td>\n facebook.com\/kgfutureagro (pre-dates KG Labs’ own official page)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Award<\/td>\n 3rd place, Host of the Year \u2014 Global Entrepreneurship Congress, Plaza Mayor, Medellin, Colombia, March 15, 2016<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n \n Network<\/td>\n Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN)<\/td>\n <\/tr>\n <\/tbody>\n <\/table>\n Sources: vb.kg, kgfac2015.weebly.com, knews.kg (April 5, 2016), KG Labs WordPress archive, Future Agro Challenge June 2015 folder<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyrgyzstan at the Future Agro Challenge: A Greenhouse Finalist and a Global Award In June 2015, KG Labs organized the first Future Agro Challenge competition in Kyrgyzstan \u2014 and in Central Asia. The Future Agro Challenge is a global agri-tech startup competition that selects national host organizations across multiple continents; in 2015, Kyrgyzstan was one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[320,333],"tags":[109,550,344,624,676,639,544,25,547,549,552,551,545,548,546],"class_list":["post-7798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hackathons-and-competitions","category-startup-ecosystem","tag-agritech","tag-athens","tag-bishkek","tag-geo-bishkek","tag-op-ecosystem-activation","tag-format-event-record","tag-fac-2015","tag-future-agro-challenge","tag-green-village","tag-greenhouse","tag-june-2015","tag-medellin-gec","tag-tilek-toktogaziev","tag-uglovoy-coworking","tag-undp"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"ru","enabled_languages":["en","ru"],"languages":{"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"ru":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7798"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7798\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kglabs.org\/ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}