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May, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 4
St Petersburg’s champions
In today’s St Petersburg there is a number of young companies that have already made a name for themselves, both locally and nationally. Some have even expanded their operations abroad. Arguably, the three most talked about
St Petersburg startups at the moment are Cardsmobile, Babadu and Napopravku.
Cardsmobile
CardsMobile (Bescontact LLC) is an innovative technology company founded in 2012. The company is a resident of the “IT cluster” at
the Skolkovo Innovation Center. The company developed and commercially launched an NFC (near-field communication) Wallet pre-installed on a leading manufacturers’ smartphones.
Cardsmobile’s flagship product, the phone application “Koshelek”, allows its users to upload fully-featured bank and travel cards over the air right into the smartphone and use them for payments with a touch of the phone over
the payment terminal, as well as contactless transport cards for ground transportation and subway. Furthermore, the app users can issue discount cards of retail chains and digital coupons in the application too. This has been made possible through the development of a special platform, which has been certified in accordance with the international MasterCard standards.
According to Retail.ru, the company’s phone app is currently installed on more than 4.5mn devices, using both Android an iOS. Around 170,000 retail chains, shops, cafes, restaurants and hair salons all over Russia are registered in the company’s database.
In September 2017, company’s CEO Filip Shubin announced Cardsmobile’s plans to expand to
its first foreign market – Kazakhstan. After concluding deals with most Russia’s major retailers, the company plans to sign similar deals with major Kazakh players.
“Currently, we are working on first integrations
with banks in Kazakhstan. Starting in April, we are planning to invest in audience and partnerships with retail. Later this year, we plan to expand
to other CIS markets and also to western
Europe,” Cardsmobile Head of Marketing Kseniia Rabinovich told bne IntelliNews.
In December last year, Cardsmobile teamed up with the world’s leading blockchain-based infrastructure solutions provided Bitfury Group to create a fully decentralized platform for loyalty programs called “LOYKEN”.
Relying on a distributed blockchain network, the platform will enable to businesses to create and manage coalition and cross-promo mechanics in any loyalty programs, ensuring data security and a degree of control over the process. After its launch, the primary users will be the existing users of the Cardsmobile app. The next stage will be an expan- sion to international markets targeting participants such as: loyalty program operators, mobile ap- plications, banks and financial institutions, online retailers and other service companies.
In 2016, the company was valued at $8.7mn. The same year, Russia’s IT company group encompassing 41 different companies, Lanit, bought 28.6% of Cardsmo- bile’s shares for $2.5mn. The company’s profit in 2015 was RUB70mn ($1.1mn). The information about the company’s current valuation is not publicly available.
According to Rabinovich, “Cardsmobile’s current valuation will be announced after the next invest- ment round is closed, which will be in April 2018.”
Babadu
Babadu is an online hypermarket selling products for children. Founded in 2010, it’s already one of the top 10 online retailers of goods for children and young mothers in Russia. The company combines an online store (toys, licensed clothing, etc.) with an internet portal aimed at promoting education and a healthy development of children. Pretty much since its founding, the company has been showing an impressive annual growth of over 100%.