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Meanwhile, the United Engine Cor- poration (UEC), a major helicopter engine manufacturer controlled by the government-owned engineer- ing corporation Rostech, is focusing its digital transformation plans on Internet of Things (IoT) technology.
The company recently launched a scheme that could take the use of IoT in Russia's heavy industry to a new level.
"It could become one of the largest projects in Russia in the area of adopting industrial IoT, as about 700 workplaces are expect- ed to be digitised," the company said.
IoT will be primarily applied to monitoring equipment at the company's 12 industrial sites, and the scheme is expected to raise the workload of the equipment by 20%.
In addition, UEC is working on a digital platform that would allow it to optimise processes at all of its production and R&D divisions.
But while leading Russian companies have made considerable progress
in digitising, most other enterprises are still lagging behind.
"Russian businesses are moving too
slowly, especially in traditional sectors," the World Bank said in a report published in October 2018. "As such, digital transformation must be enforced in large traditional enterprises and [state owned enterprises], which would create demand for innovation
in their respective ecosystems."
According to the World Bank, the focus should be on sectorial and cross-sectorial digital platforms, which grow into seamless horizontal digital ecosystems, and enable the emergence of new business models, innovation and private sector competitiveness.
Astana eager to boast a regional IT
startups hub
Kanat Shaku in Astana
Earlier last year, Kazakhstan’s capital Astana saw the launch of the Astana International Finan- cial Centre (AIFC), the Central Asian nation’s second attempt at forming a regional financial hub. The headquarters of the financial services nexus are found in the exotic buildings that hosted the Astana EXPO 2017 international fair.
In an attempt to get the most out of the EXPO site, the Kazakh authorities don’t want to limit their ambitions to just a single type of hub, however.
The state-run EXPO-2017 company has also been tasked with developing a busi- ness centre for “stimulating economic activity” in the region following the examples of La Défense in Paris and Mos- cow City, among others. The prospects
of success for such a large-scale effort mainly depend on the individual projects the EXPO-2017 company is planning
to incorporate into it. One such project includes the launch of an international hub for IT startups, which has already existed for around a year despite holding its official launch ceremony last month.
Dubbed simply as the Astana Hub, it is
to be complemented by an international IT university. It focuses on providing free co-working spaces, access to net- working and potential investors
and assistance in marketing efforts.
The hub is subdivided into an accel- erator, an incubator and a number of rentable office spaces mainly taken by veteran IT sector entities of the country.
Support for smart startups
Startups already benefiting from Astana Hub support currently comprise of 146 IT companies. Notable examples include Smart Gas, a smartphone app offering cheaper petrol prices, which has partnered with 65 gasoline stations so far. Another startup, Kompra, focuses on providing background checks on business entities by compiling government data from over 20 open sources. The company is currently partnered with 12 big firms, including five local banks, and boasts 5,400 clients. In both cases, the only role taken on by the Astana Hub is that of providing PR support and placing the startups in a position where they might benefit from a network of contacts and prospective investors.
Among the larger IT businesses there
is a fintech startup SENIM that offers smart wallet services via their app to consumers and businesses alike. The company, which launched prior to the hub’s existence back in 2016 and eventu- ally took part in the hub’s accelerator,
is also developing a crowdfunding and investments platform complete with "smart blockchain contracts".
"Our products need a big user base, when we launched [one and a half years ago] we expected that entering the mar- ket would be much easier [than it turned out to be]," the CEO of SENIM, Daulet Yermekov, told bne IntelliNews. "Then we participated in the hub's second accel- erator, where we were taught by experts how to position ourselves – how to find
a niche to enter the market."
SENIM's smart wallet, featuring QR- code-based payments, covers a wide variety of local goods and services, which are normally paid for online. SENIM's userbase automatically gets access to multiple services and enjoys 10% or higher cashbacks in return. It lists Kazakh firms such as Ticketon,
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