Russia spends a lot of money on the development of innovation sphere; however, revenues from the most significant developments, such as Yandex, or Telegram are in private hands or abroad. But in Belarus IT-industry has reached a record speed turnover even without the state participation. It is Belarusian programmers who have created the most popular games and applications today.
The mobile application transformed young Belarusian IT-entrepreneurs in dollar millionaires. Over a matter of days their program became one of the most downloaded in the world. Its essence is in applying of a computer mask online. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg made them an offer he can not refuse. According to rumors, the deal amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars.
Such a great success in the field of information technology for Belarus is a common practice. For example, a local IT-entrepreneur Arkady Dobkin is a creator of the largest European manufacturer of custom software as well as Matvey Timoshenko and Petr Skoromniy, whose r company is in the top 10 mobile applications for Apple developers.
For many people the main symbol of Belarus is potatoes. The annual production of potatoes there is about six million tonnes. However, recently the Belarusian Information technologies have been sold better than potatoes. If we calculate the export of computer services per capita, Belarus is ahead of not only Russia, but even the United States and India. 74 dollars of IT-sphere account for one person in Belarus, while In Russia it is only 19.
Even during the crisis information technology continues to grow. Consider the company, for example, that comes up with one of the most popular online games in the world World of Tanks. Because of such programmers Victor Kisliy became the first Belarusian dollar billionaire. According to Bloomberg, the price of his company is one and a half billion. People all over the world including Russia want to work this company.
The local Silicon Valley is Belarus High Technology Park on the outskirts of Minsk. There are 152 existing computer companies inside, and hundreds of start-ups Valery Tsepkalo, director of the Park, does not consider it right to compare the Belarusian High Tech Park with the Russian Skolkovo.
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Valery Tsepkalo, director of the High Technology Park, “The point was that we took another business model initially. We even considered the idea of getting money from the state at the beginning of the development process rather harmful, as in this case there is certain disorientation in the choice of your priorities.”
Valery Tsepkalo assures that they specifically reject state subsidies, not because of the unwillingness to borrow money, but in order to make money, for example for the state.
However, there is another revenue model – for example, the work of local programmers for international companies, as it is happening with the Japanese-Israeli Viber, the development center of which is located in Minsk. Experts predict that very soon the IT-industry in Belarus will reach almost 5 percent of GDP.
Source: ntv.ru