According to the 2023 Activity Report of the Communications Commission, the Media Lab of the Cedia Academy actively supported startups in the field of media literacy and digital media in 2023. The Media Lab held more than 20 seminars and trained up to 450 startuppers last year. 

In 2023, the Media Lab organised two editions of “Ideadrome” – a contest that aims to discover startup ideas, attract funding for potential startups and helping them bring their product to the market. As part of the contest, participants underwent week-long intensive training and worked with professional mentors to improve their startups. The contest had a prize fund of GEL 10,000. Some participants have already managed to take their product to the global market. For example, past “Ideadrome” winner Wempler is already actively operating, and its monthly revenues are increasing by 60%. In 2023, the startup managed to attract up to USD 400,000 in additional investment. 

2023 was a successful year for past participants of “Ideadrome” who became involved in the Media Lab acceleration programme. The goal of the programme is to help startups improve, raise funding and enter the global market. Apart from being given the opportunity to have free consultations with leading industry professionals, startups could also use the Media Lab space free of charge, which fully meets all their requirements with regards to technical equipment and infrastructure. One of the startups involved in the accelerator programme, the AI-based platform Stori that helps customers automate content marketing, raised $500,000 in investment last year and won the Golden Kitty Award on the Product Hunt platform, as well as the Product of the Month status. 

Within the framework of the Global Media and Information Literacy Week, the Media Lab held a media literacy hackaton for young people, which aimed to identify media literacy-related challenges and innovative ways of resolving them. 10 teams took part in the hackathon. With the help of professional trainers and mentors, they developed business projects on the issues of ed-tech, protection against fake news and access to information. Interesting projects developed during the event included an AI-based programme that allows users to detect fake news; a platform for protecting private information online; and an educational video game that helps school pupils obtain practical knowledge on civic education and security. The Communications Commission awarded the winning teams GEL 5,000, GEL 2,000 and GEL 1,000 respectively. 

In order to raise awareness, share experience and develop digital literacy, the Media Lab constantly distributes informational materials on online platforms for people interested in this field. In addition to the video lessons, a series of podcasts was added to the Media Lab projects in 2023, which involves startups and industry professionals sharing their experiences with the audience.