Page 28 - BNE_magazine_06_2019

28 I Companies & Markets bne June 2019
Russian stoligarch Rotenberg, defence conglomerate and satellite navigation operator team up to create nationwide IoT network
EWDN in Moscow
GLONASS-TM, a company launched in early 2018, intends to deploy an Internet-of-Things (IoT) network across Russia as part as a “government assignment,” reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).
The network will be used to monitor, collect and analyse data in a variety of fields. It will help “control the state of the country’s transportation infrastructure, security systems, meteorological and ecological monitoring and waste utilization management systems,” the company’s general manager Denis Simakin told the business daily RBC.
The company is co-owned by Rostec, the state defence conglomerate; JSC Glonass, the operator of Russia’s national satellite navigation system ERA-Glonass; and IT Invest Transport Systems, a company that oversees Russia’s electronic toll collection infrastructure, of, which Russian billionaire
Wildberries leads the top 50 Russian e-commerce online stores ranked by revenues in 2018
Adrien Henni in Moscow for East West Digital News
Fashion e-commerce retailer Wildberries was Russia’s biggest e-commerce online store in 2018 according to a new ranking by revenues from Data Insight, reports East-West Digital News (EWDN).
Data Insight is a specialized research agency and released its ranking of Russian e-commerce sites in 2018 at the end of April.
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and stoligarch, or state-sponsored oligarch, Igor Rotenberg is a shareholder.
The network will be based on the XNB protocol – created last year by ‘Modern Radio Technologies,’ another Rotenberg company – to support its low-power wide-area network (LPWAN). Under plans, the network will include more than 34,000 base stations following a five-year deployment plan (2020-2024). The required budget reaches 53 billion over these first five years (nearly $830mn at the current exchange rate).
GLONASS-TM has already received the required frequencies (863–865 MHz and 874-876 MHz), but will not receive state funding to implement the project.
Rotenberg, whose family has close ties to Russian President Vladi- mir Putin, has been targeted by US and Canadian sanctions.
Russian online store Wildberries leads the top 100 ranking of biggest Russian e-commerce sites by revenues and is worth more than a billion dollars.
Sites are ranked by sales volume (incl. VAT), number of orders and average order value as estimated by the research agency and, in certain cases, confirmed by the companies. The ranking excludes marketplaces, which explains why Aliexpress, the Alibaba subsidiary that dominates cross- border flows in Russia, is not mentioned.