bne_Tech_12_2019

Contents
bne:Tech
December 2019 www.intellinews.com @bneintellinews
Russia emerges as a top three fintech market
Eight out of ten (82%) Russians use some sort of fintech service making it the third most developed market in the world, according to a study by Ernst & Young.
Top Stories 2
Russia emerges as a top three fintech market 2 Russia's Skolkovo proposes
IT integrator for the public sector 3 Used clothing marketplace Vinted becomes Lithuania's first ever $1bn
tech unicorn 4 Yandex sets up NGO to hold its golden share, changes governance to reassure government and investors 7
Leaders 10
Russian mobile major MTS presents customer lifetime value strategy 10 Russia's Sberbank to compete on driverless market 11
Investment 12
Czech, US investment funds interested
in Deutsche Telekom’s Romanian operations 12 Estonia’s “secret career app”
MeetFrank raises funds for
international expansion 13 Estonian anti-money-laundering
startup Salv secures seed funding 14 Foreign investors drive Romania’s
IT industry 14 Investors overweight on Russia,
with Yandex, Sberbank and oil
names in favour 15
Fintech & E-commerce 17
Amazon to open pan-European e-commerce logistics centre in Poland 17 E-commerce grows in Azerbaijan but
still at just 0.2% of retail trade 17 Fintech company Revolut expects
1mn users in Romania 18
Telecom 19
Kosovo Telecom faces bankruptcy
over debts to tax administration 19 Ericsson and Azerbaijan’s Azercell
sign 3-year 5G MoU 19 New Bulgarian owner aims
to turn Telekom Albania
into market leader 20 Ukrainian telecom operator
Ukrtelecom seeks amicable deal
on Oschadbank debt 21
NIBs 22
Russia is only behind China and India when it comes to fintech services' penetration, which both have an 87% penetration, but ahead of South Africa and Columbia.
See page 2
Russia's Skolkovo proposes IT integrator for the public sector
Russia’s government is keen to wean itself off foreign technology and promote domestically developed hard- and software. Now the tech hub Skolkovo based in Moscow has proposed creating
an “IT integrator” for the country's giant state-owned enterprises (SOE) that will push both import substitution
and the Kremlin’s digitalization drive.
See page 3