Innotech

The venture studio business model is on the rise all over the world. While the traditional startup approach may offer independence, approximately 90% of beginner companies fail, proving this path to be quite risky.

The safer venture studio concept was first introduced in 1996 by Bill Gross who founded Icelab. Since then it has experienced 4 waves of popularity. At the moment the number of venture studios all over the world is getting close to 600, with Russian segment making a noticeable portion.

Furthermore, 2021 became the record-breaking year for the national venture market. Time to discuss and analyze the results!

Don’t miss the reveal of “Venture Russia: 2021 results”, a detailed report featuring the head of Innotech’s own Venture studio, Vitaly Mzokov. The event is happening online next Friday, March 4th, and starts at 6 PM Moscow time.

➡️ https://dsight.timepad.ru/event/1907664/

Innotech took part in the Future Banks Summit in Dubai (Verve Management UAE) !

The Future Banks Summit was held on the 21st and 22nd of February in the UAE. This massive event united over 200 experts and leading specialists in technology, business and finance. Guests and speakers showcased the latest innovations and practical case studies as well as participated in informative panel discussions intended to outline the best strategy for future industry development.

Safe to say, the summit is an obligatory place to visit if you are aiming to develop your business in the BFSI industry and want to stay in line with the latest trends.

The 2021 edition featured a number of high-ranking guests including CEOs and executive team members from the Emirates Investment Bank, Quatar National Bank (QNB Group) , Saudi National Bank (SNBAlAhli), National Bank of Kuwait (NBKGroup) and more!

Innotech was represented by Yuriy Blednykh (Director of Strategic Projects) and Oxana Kikot (Head of Corporate Communications) who shared their expertise and engaged in productive discussions with the summit participants.

We would like to thank the Future Banks Summit team as well as all the participants for an amazing event! This week we made a noticeable step towards prosperous business development in the MEA region. Our team is looking forward to future cooperation and mutually beneficial partnerships!

Digital Transformation is one of the biggest success factors for today’s business. Despite being a hot topic in the recent years, many companies are still struggling to adapt their operations and structure to the modern era. Surprisingly, some even withhold this process on purpose.

In this post we’ll look at the most common obstacles companies encounter on their way to digital transformation. First, however, let’s take a step back and outline its definition:

Digital transformation is the integration of latest technology into the company structure and management that results in a major change in how it operates, liaises with partners and delivers value to customers. Digital transformation is a constant process due to numerous technologies being introduced on a regular basis.

Now that we understand what digital transformation is, let’s jump straight into the top 4 issues enterprises are experiencing ⬇️

1.Lack of strategy. Now, you may hear a lot of fancy new words that come along with technologies and services, but do you actually know what they stand for? Sometimes business owners are eager to adapt random services for no apparent reason. It is essential to study the technology relevant for your industry, fully understand its benefits and put together a detailed integration plan.

2. Lack of support for education. People are the major driving asset of every company. In order for the transformation to be successful, business owners need to make sure employees are aware of and have mastered the latest technological approaches. Many companies prefer to save money on additional education. Sadly, they don’t realize that such investments will increase the employee expertise and, ultimately, make their business more profitable.

3. Lack of qualified IT specialists. Integration often requires additional hires. Furthermore, qualified IT staff can be hard to find and afford. Having new departments will definitely introduce additional strain on your budget. Many businesses are simply not ready for this.

4. Cultural barriers. We may think and do business differently, depending on our age and where we come from. Sometimes the company executives may not be so eager to adapt new approaches since they don’t trust the latest tech and remain confident their current tried and tested strategy works best.

Innotech was born in 2020 with digital transformation in mind. We make sure to fully utilize new technologies as well as develop cutting edge-products for the banking industry. Be sure to have a look at the posts on our page for more info or visit our website at https://inno.tech/en/product

As much as 65% of banks globally recognize Open API as the key driver for payment system modernization. The number was revealed in the recent ACI Worldwide report.

Here at Innotech, we often talk about the critical role of digital transformation for banks who want to stay relevant in the market. It’s good to see the majority shares our conclusion and accepts new solutions and business partnerships.

We asked Anton Yakimov (Innotech CTO) to provide more insights on the report data:

“IT sector has gone through a huge leap over the last decade. It keeps introducing services, business solutions, consumer electronics and other products that are in high demand. Due to considerable profits, many startups have now grown into huge global corporations and are able to attract the most educated and talented human resource.

According to Hurun Research Institute, in December 2021 there was a total of 1058 unicorn startups, privately held companies with a value of over $1 billion. That’s a massive 80% increase compared to 2020. What’s interesting is that Business Management Solutions and Financial Services are the industries most disrupted by unicorns. Furthermore, 139 unicorns are in the FinTech business.

With funding and talents by their side, many companies are starting to take advantage of opportunities they didn’t explore before, including banking and payment systems, which clearly represents a threat to established banks. They have not been as flexible as their IT counterparts. In some instances, heavy government regulations discouraged them from introducing new services. Other bank owners simply preferred to retain their conservative business approaches.

COVID-19 introduced a number of unforeseen factors, such as social distancing. People were starting to look for user friendly online services as they didn’t have the ability to visit banks in person. Payment solutions offered by big IT corporations started to gain popularity.

By now it is clear that in order to survive the competition banks need to drop their conservative views. Essentially, they need to become IT-friendly companies, be open to integrating partner solutions and introduce flexibility in their operations. The ACI Worldwide report demonstrates that old views are starting to fade away with more and more banks fully embracing digital transformation”.

Being on the forefront of digital transformation, Innotech has the perfect product for banks who are aiming to adapt to the new era, the Digital Banking Platform. Anton highlighted the most important benefits:

“The Digital Banking Platform is a multifunctional solution that is able to interoperate with any core banking system out there, allowing banks to bring a better customer experience at a reasonably attractive cost. Banks can improve the quality of their services without the need to redesign the entire IT landscape.

Using open banking API, trusted partners are able to get authorized access to financial data of bank customers and provide them with value-added services. The Core Banking System integration layer presents a unique option to create a custom integration with any CBS available on the market. Furthermore, it allows to independently execute business processes tied to different CBS implementations. Additionally, Innotech’s solution accumulates demographics, product and application usage and other customer data into individual profiles for micro segmentation purposes. As a result, our partners can target these segments with highly precise marketing campaigns.”

Key aspects to consider when expanding your business into new regions ⬇

Last couple of years have provided IT startups with great opportunities for rapid growth. After initial success in the home region, companies often start to think about expanding their operations in other areas around the world.

Definitely a great goal to have.

In this post we have put together a number of vital aspects and suggestions for startups to keep in mind when taking their business a step further:

🔹 Make the most of the Blue Ocean Strategy. In other words, consider entering an uncontested market where there are no or very few competitors. Many startups explore Europe or North America for expansion, but there are plenty of opportunities in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

🔹 Make sure you fully understand the local environment. If you don’t feel confident enough consider finding a local representative who knows the market and can help the company navigate it. Sometimes it’s better to lock up partnerships with local players. This might provide your startup with a huge initial boost.

🔹 Be an active industry player. Tackling the toughest global challenges cannot be achieved by one company or sector alone. Parties that combine efforts create value. Pandemic showed us the importance of interconnectivity, which means not just cooperation, but competition as well. Last few years have demonstrated that competitors can often benefit from cooperating with one another on a strategic level. This can be a great way to save costs and avoid duplication of effort.

At Innotech we believe in the power of partnerships, cooperation and competition. We are better together rather than apart. Innotech has been openly sharing its experience and expertise. This allowed the company to build a network based on transparency and trust. In other words, a hub of people, resources and offerings brought together to give our customers everything they need to create and deliver exceptional banking experience.

Gathering insights from Big Data remains a challenge for most companies in 2022.

According to Sigma Computing, employees from 63% of companies say they can’t get insights from their data before it becomes outdated. Another Forrester report highlights the same problem from a different angle, stating that between 60 and 73% of all data is never used for analytical purposes.

Today market recognizes the importance of Big Data and its immense role in digital transformation. So why do companies fail to make efficient use of valuable data at hand?

Innotech’s expertise in Big Data is concentrated in a separate unit - Datatech. We asked Alexander Fridman, First Deputy CEO of “Datatech”, to explain why many market players are still struggling with this issue despite collecting large volumes of information:

“Today working with Data is critically important in order to stay on top of the continuous market changes. It is essential for any business to be able to make fast decisions and come up with the right products based on customer needs. Hence, companies need to be data-driven.

Society around the world continues to embrace digital era. This involves new ways of content consumption, active use of internet, new ways of shopping, etc. Our everyday activities generate an immense amount of data, which has potential to be used both by business and individuals for their benefit.

Estimates may vary, but experts agree that all industries combined generate over 2 exabytes (2,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes) each day. An impressive number, however, when it comes to comprehensive data analysis, two key issues instantly emerge:

1. Lack of Budget. To effectively process all incoming information, you need to set up an appropriate data management architecture. It is absolutely crucial in order to receive analytical information, efficiently assist with decision-making and strategic planning. But such architecture, even though fully worth the cost, can be really expensive. Many business owners are not ready to commit to such investments.

2. Shortage of qualified data scientists and developers. You really want experienced IT specialists to run your data management. At the moment there are simply not enough of them for the entire market.

Despite these continuous issues, some industries seem to be doing much better than others. Online entertainment is definitely one of them. Take Netflix and Spotify. Due to efficient data management these services are able to offer instant and precise content recommendations to users. People are encouraged to keep paying subscription fees until they get bored (which may never be the case due to endless personalized recommendations).

A great example of what happens when a company fully commits to investing in Big Data management”.

So what about Datatech’s expertise? How is the company prepared to face today’s challenges?

“We are fortunate to have some of the best specialists in Big Data in Eastern Europe within our team, including data engineers, data scientists, analytics, developers and more“– says Alexander.

He continues: “Even though officially our company was recently born, our staff has years of experience within IT sector. Last year Russian banking industry reported huge profits. This would not have been possible without effective data management, an area where our team members have contributed to.

We combine and make the most of data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning to integrate a full management cycle, from corporate storage to unstructured Big Data analysis platform. We also develop industrial solutions involving modern analytical methods as well as ML and AI Technologies.

Datatech is very excited for new partnerships and is fully committed to providing industry-leading data management services.”

Innotech stands ready to share its expertise and cutting-edge technology with African business.

Africa continues to experience a number of issues when it comes to digital transformation. We have outlined some of the major challenges below:

🔹 Few citizens have digital IDs or transaction accounts which prevents access to e-commerce and important services.
🔹 The continent has a vast population of over 1 billion. Yet, roughly 300 million people had internet access in 2021.
🔹 According to Harvard Business Review, Africa has about 700.000 professional developers, but this number is relatively small compared to other continents. For example, India alone was home to 2.75 million developers (as of 2017).

However, there have been some positive trends in the recent years. The regional FinTech industry may very well be the driving factor for African development.

According to TechChrunch, African tech startups raised almost $5 billion in 2021. That’s nine times what was raised five years ago! Furthermore, FinTech alone raised $3 billion last year, clearly playing a dominant role compared to other tech industries.

Today, Russia is fortunate to be one of the digital transformation leaders in banking. The country’s FinTech industry has introduced many innovative technologies and approaches, and Innotech is recognized as one of the major players. We have contributed to the record profits of Russian banking industry in 2021. Now, we are fully ready for new partnerships in key regions around the world, including Africa.

We are confident we have a lot of field-proven technological approaches that can be used for the benefit of African business and, ultimately speed up the continent’s digital transformation.

Be sure to visit the link below to learn more about us and our flagship product, the Digital Banking Platform.
➡️ https://inno.tech/en/product

We are proud to be represented at the Krasnoyarsk Economic Forum (Красноярский экономический форум), one of Russia’s largest annual business conventions!

Every year the Forum unites the most influential representatives from the government and business as well as leading industry experts. It has been providing a unique opportunity to exchange best practices and stay up-to-date with the latest news and trends. The Forum is well-known for attracting major attention with the 2021 edition & managing to gather 8000+ experts and guests.

This year the Forum will celebrate its 18th anniversary, a truly impressive milestone!

Two of our speakers will be sharing their expertise ⬇️

👉 March 2nd. At the “Generation-2030” platform
👤 Andrey Petukhov, Head of GR Department at Innotech, will take part in the session “Digital Culture in Business”. Andrey will talk about the youngest generation of specialists and their role in digital transformation.

👉 March 3rd. The main Forum stage.
👤 Dina Gaizatullina, Deputy General Director for GR at Innotech will participate in the session “Regional Business under 30”. The discussion will focus on the essential points for a starting business owner under 30 years.

Make sure to register at https://www.pokolenie2030.ru to join the discussion with Andrey on March 2nd.

You can catch Dina live on March 3rd at https://kef-2022.ru. No registration required.

Mark your calendars and follow the exciting discussions!

#финтех #технологии #форум #кэф

IT trends for 2022 according to Igor Kalganov, Innotech CEO.

Fintech is one of the most dynamic and fast-growing industries today. Its trends and changes inevitably influence other business areas all over the world. Despite the small IT portion in Russia’s GDP, the country’s tech enterprises have vast capabilities in developing competitive scalable products which could be successfully used all over the world. Fintech, in particular, stands as one of the most promising areas in terms of future development within Russian IT sector.

As a CEO of one of the leading fintech companies with Russian origin, Igor Kalganov was asked by Banki.ru (Банки.ру) and CNews Media to share his vision on technological changes and developments we can expect in the near future.

His personal top-3 includes ⬇

1. The development of fintech ecosystems and the dominant role of big market players
2. Artificial Intelligence, automation and increased demand for AI analysts
3. The increased use of unmanned transport and delivery

Be sure to check out the full interviews where Igor explored every trend in detail and shared his reasoning on adding these areas to the list!

➡https://www.banki.ru/news/columnists/?id=10960538
➡https://www.cnews.ru/reviews/cnews_trendy_2022/interviews/igor_kalganov

Got some exciting business ideas under your sleeve? Today may be the perfect time to open up for an investment and start turning your plans into a full-fledged company.

According to Crunchbase, early stage funding in global startups reached $201 billion in 2021, doubling the 2020 numbers.

The past year has been absolutely huge for investments and fintech industry, and we expect this trend to continue for years to come. Alexey Volynkin (Алексей Волынкин), First Deputy General Director and Business Development Director at Innotech, explores the topic further:

“The wide availability of internet and communications in the 21st century presented an education opportunity for people who are eager to learn. Armed with new skills and knowledge, they are generating some really exciting ideas and even putting together well worked-through business plans.”

He continues: “Investors are of course noticing all the potentially profitable initiatives. Furthermore, they know quite well that successful brands like Whatsapp, Uber and Airbnb were also once just ideas on paper. Fortunately, these plans were transformed into startups and, eventually, brought huge amounts of money to their backers”.

With this in mind, investors are eager for a chance to get involved in the next big enterprise that may bring them financial success.

While North America is leading the fintech revolution, so to speak, many other countries and regions are actively following up.

At Innotech we consider it important to facilitate this positive trend all over the world. We are working to provide more education opportunities in IT and launch accelerator programs in countries with yet to be unleashed potential. “Startup Bridge”, our joint program with UZCARD, is the most recent example of our efforts.

Generally speaking, regions like the Middle East and North Africa have the hidden potential to generate a surprisingly big number of successful startups that can be scaled into global corporations. We are making plans to expand our involvement in these regions alongside South-East Asia to support the local fintech industry as well as promising talents.

Replacing your back office department with machines. Is it worth it?

Every IT company has a back office team responsible for recurring and unexciting tasks. The technological development over the recent years suggests that much of this work can be automated, but is it worth it? Should you fire your back office team to reduce expenses? Has the digital revolution in team management already commenced?

Igor Kalganov, our CEO, shares his insights on Innotech's approach:

“At the moment we have about 7% of our team performing back office roles. I am confident we can eventually slice this portion in half without actually firing anyone. To achieve this, we plan to increase the company without expanding the back office team. I consider this to be the best way forward. We’d rather keep our team responsible for the “boring” work small, make them motivated by paying twice as much, and automate some of their processes".

At Innotech, we are keeping a close eye on the latest developments. We cannot wait to see what opportunities will be presented to us once we'll learn to automate the software developer tasks. At that point the digital revolution will truly be upon us.

Yet there will always be important roles for real people to take care of. It is essential for us to preserve and increase human talents. As a company, we will make sure our vast team stays motivated and keeps using its unique potential to the fullest.

Innotech joins RUSSOFT (НП РУССОФТ), an influential association of software developing companies in Russia!

RUSSOFT unites more than 250 IT companies with over 70.000 highly skilled specialists. Its mission is to combine the industry efforts to efficiently promote shared interests. The association has reached some major achievements throughout its history and positively influenced the development of IT community in Russia and a number of other countries. We felt it was only right for Innotech to join and step up our industry liaison efforts.

Innotech CEO Igor Kalganov explained how our membership can benefit the company:

“In just 18 months Innotech became the driving force of the fintech industry. We are developing cutting-edge digital transformation solutions both for regional and global customers. Our team currently includes over 6000 talented specialists and our services cover over 15 million end users. Having joined forces with other RUSSOFT members, Innotech will be able to contribute to policies and approaches of the IT market, set industry trends and efficiently react to modern challenges”.

Our entire team is honored to be welcomed by RUSSOFT and its associates. We are excited to play an active role in working out efficient solutions for the benefit of all industry players!

#руссофт