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I was waiting for  the Russian Kuznech to start making headlines in the Russian startup press for a while, but it is just this week that the news came in that the company won the startup competition of the IDCEE – the Investor Day CEE conference that took place in Kiev, Ukraine last week.

Kuznech’s angel investor and the key front man Pavel Cherkashin has previously pitched the startup at the TechCrunch Moscow. I have been DM-ing furiously at one of the judges on stage hoping to have the startup in the lead poll position, but alas my karma was not influential enough. Finally, the well-funded technology company that took on a challenge of the image-based search, has received a well-deserved, in my humble opinion, recognition at this startup event.

So, image search? I see so many applications, but it must be fast and easy to use. Most applicable for the store-type search, looking for shoes, to use the first example that comes to mind. Imagga in Bulgaria is solving a similar problem.

What’s more, Kuznech has this neat tech called Tagin, which helps place links and tags with prices and a shopping cart within an image – an inspiration-based shopping. The technology is commercially available. As the IDCEE winner Kuznech took 15,000 Euro prize.

Other finalists of the IDCEE startup competition included:

• A Russian startup Flocktory, which  offers a social marketing referral platform. It reminded me a little of the Czech startup BrandEmbassy. It won 10,000 Euros.
• Czech realPad is an iPad app for residential developers to help cut costs and sell more. The startup picked up 5000 Euros.

I regret I did not attend the conference. Maybe next year.

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