The Future of Technological Entrepreneurship in Russia Discussed at the XXVII SPIEF
The sphere of technological entrepreneurship in Russia is receiving attention, but there is still potential for development. Entrepreneurs face a number of problems, including a lack of venture capital, difficulty entering the international market, and a shortage of qualified specialists. The share of investments in technological startups from GDP is small, about 0.005%. For comparison, in Israel this share is 240 times higher. What can help the emergence of new achievements in the economy, science, and technology was discussed by experts at the session «Technological Entrepreneurship — the Basis for Russia's Development», organized by Sber as part of the XXVII SPIEF.
Alexander Vedyakhin, First Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Sberbank. Photo: Sberbank press service
“Deep tech startups— these are companies that work at the intersection of technologies and sometimes they become so disruptive that they create new markets,” – noted the moderator of the event, First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin.
He thanked the Minister of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov for his attention to the topic. More recently, Alikhanov drew attention to a startup created by a schoolboy from Ryazan in the Sber accelerator. The guys came up with a shopping cart that can independently follow a customer around the sales floor and understands what products the customer puts in it in order to collect valuable information for the retailer.
“This development is already being used in some stores. If we talk about the industry as a whole, the ministry faces a big task – This is hardware, our own production of microelectronics. We have made good progress in terms of software. But the creation of microelectronics is still a big challenge,” the minister emphasized. He added that in trade, deep tech solutions occupy second place in terms of demand. Another promising direction – automated transport. Last year, thanks to ASI initiatives, the M-11 highway accepted the first trucks and cars with automatic control.
«These are good answers to how to replace the labor shortage in industry. Now we estimate it at 240-250 thousand people,” the minister emphasized.
“The government is trying to create platforms and technologies together with companies, but we see from the legislative side that this is still a rather crude design from the point of view of legislative instruments. Last year an important step was taken – “We adopted a law on small technology companies,” said Maxim Topilin, Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy. He also emphasized that he is ready to discuss the details of working with startups together with Sber.
“The entire community and major companies are ready to give their initiatives, because the main problem – labor productivity is at a minimum level. And only technology can improve it. Accordingly, without breakthrough technologies, we will continue to mark time and hide behind the fact that we do not have enough people. For example, we, together with the MIPT startup studio, announced the opening of a new project — a deep tech startup studio. Science-intensive startups can turn there. We train them and then support them, we invest in the most interesting ones,” answered Vedyakhin.
The CEO of the startup Orient Systems, which produces high-precision satellite navigation systems, Sergei Lebedev told us what barriers there are to the development of startups: this is a lack of internal demand and popularization. It is necessary to destroy myths so that students and scientists know that it is possible to create startups in the country and achieve results. In turn, co-founder of the Kama Flow venture fund Evgeny Borisov believes that there should be many times more startups than there are now in the country. And for there to be more of them, we need stable investment demand.