Page 24 - bne_Magazine_May_2018_print

24 I Companies & Markets bne May 2018
bne:Tech
Sberbank sets up trade-boosting website
Ben Aris in Moscow
Two men are playing ping pong next to the floor to ceiling glass windows on the atrium. The walls are
a vivid burnt ochre with metre-high lettered lables on them and we wend our way through a transparent maze of curtained glass walled meeting rooms and soft chairs with high blinds between them so you can lounge at your com- puter while you work.
“I don't think anyone in this building is a banker,” says Arsen Dumikyan, the executive director and product owner of BestofPartners.com, Sberbank's new trade promotion platform.
Maybe all this has become a bit of a cliché in the business world. “It looks like Google’s offices,” remarks my colleague as we pass the kitchen that seems to be the busiest room on our 15th level floor.
But of course it is not. It is the work space of the Soviet era people’s saving bank, Sberbank, the state-owned retail banking king of Russia. This is the headquarters of Sberbank Agile just off Kutzovsky prospect, one of Moscow's huge “spoke roads,” the bank’s hub for technology and innovation as it sets out on the self-assigned task of bootstrapping Russia into the 21st century. Whatever it is, it certainly doesn't look like a bank.
“We can do something useful for Russia,” says Dumikyan, a young man in a deep blue causal jacket sitting on the high stools that surround a high tech work station.
He reaches out and clicks a button his laptop, and the big screen on the wall by his head leaps into life.
Dumikyan is leading a project sponsored by Sberbank to create a cross border trade community. Sberbank is sponsoring this project – Best of Partners (BBP) – not investing into it, as there is no monetarisation angle and the bank’s logo is barely visible on the site. The idea is simple: to bring together people work- ing in cross border trade and make it easy for them to connect.
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Arsen Dumikyan, Executive Director at Sberbank
“It’s simple economics. Trade is good for countries so the more you can encourage it – the easier you make it to do – the better off everyone is,” says Dumikyan enthusiastically.
When pressed he admits that eventually Sberbank could make some money off the site by offering trade financing services, and as Russia’s largest bank about half any trade deals that need banking services will end up with Sberbank anyway, but that is not the point.
“Sberbank is a leader in most financial products and we know how to grow a market,” says Dumikyan, who is not a banker and came to Sberbank from Inbev, one of the world’s leading beer producers. “We are only trying to grow the pie now and a bigger pie will feed more people. Even if half the deals go to our competition we will still be happy as there will be more business for everyone.”
The site went live in November last year and got 300,000 visits in just the first months. Currently it has just over 9,000
“Sberbank is a leader in most financial products and we know how to grow a market”
registered users that have made 5660 offers (the system doesn't track the number of deals that are actually completed).
And it is a mixed bag of participants. While you might expect the site to target big business, it is actually a tool for anyone in logistics and trade to use.
“We have a wide variety of users at the moment – everything from a photographer who lives near a port and will go down there to take a picture of your goods when they arrive as proof of delivery to big engineering firms in Germany looking to sell