Interros

The MIPT Master's Degree in Blockchain was the first in Russia to issue an anniversary gold coin with the university's heraldry in the form of an NFT

In July 2022, the MIPT Master's Degree in blockchain became the first Russian state curriculum to issue non-interchangeable NFT tokens for master's degrees.

"The 75th anniversary of MIPT is an important event for science and education in Russia. Phystech has always been one of the most advanced technological universities in our country, determining the scientific vector of development for years to come. The team of the scientific center "Idea" has many phys-techs [graduates] working in various fields. And it was important for us that Phystech became one of the first universities to introduce NFT into its activities as one of the modern technological solutions. Now every graduate will have his own gold NFT coin of MIPT, which will remind of the years of study at the university: teachers, fellow students, the first breakthroughs in the chosen scientific direction," said Tagir Aushev, scientific director of the Idea Center, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Professor, corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The Russian developer of digital solutions Reksoft and the leading industrial system integrator CONSOM GROUP will work together on projects in the field of mining and fuel and energy industry, transport and processing industry

The priority areas of the partnership will be cyber-physical systems in industry, design and commissioning of the SCADA, HMI software package, inter-level integration of MES, MRO, WMS and LIMS class systems. And for the effective management of the enterprise, the direction of integration of accounting production data will be in demand.

"In the current situation, requests for the development and support of technological systems of mining enterprises are so large that they require the consolidated efforts of specialized IT teams. It is here that we see the synergy effect of the partnership of Reksoft mining solutions with CONSOM GROUP," commented Dmitry Karamyshev, Director of the Reksoft Mining Solutions Department.

The Russian blockchain platform Atomyze plans to launch operations with the CFA for individuals by the end of 2022

The company has already submitted rules for registration with the Central Bank, which describe settlements on a nominal account. After their approval, individuals will be admitted to the platform. This was announced by the CEO of Atomyze Ekaterina Frolovicheva.

"Trading will be conducted on the basis of a nominal account using the DVP model. Next, Atomyze plans to implement integration with the digital ruble and create a fully digital client path when interacting with the CFA," explained E. Frolovicheva.

In addition, the platform is considering the possibility for Russian investors to exit the CFA into metals and other protective assets – this is allowed by the platform's technologies. The blockchain solution guarantees transparency and allows users to independently control transactions without intermediaries.

Atomyze also plans to develop partnerships with banks. Negotiations are already underway with several major players to integrate CFA into bank applications.

Employees of Norilsk Nickel will become beneficiaries of the company

Vladimir Potanin, in an interview with RBC TV, said that Norilsk Nickel will increase the stake in the company held by private individuals, including its employees, from 10% to 25% within 10 years.

Employees will have the opportunity to purchase shares of Norilsk Nickel in the form of a CFA on the Atomize blockchain platform.

The program was named "Digital Investor" and will begin at Norilsk Nickel in 2023, but employees are already being trained to work with the CFA.

"The idea is to restore some historical justice in a sense. When Norilsk Nickel was privatized, about 25% of the shares were owned by employees. But, unfortunately, the employees were not able to fully take advantage of this kind of investment, many sold these shares. I would like to restore this historical justice and lead to the fact that 25% of the shares of Norilsk Nickel again returned to people, including employees," the president of Norilsk Nickel said in an interview.

The Voskhod Fund has entered the top of the most active venture funds in Russia

Softline Venture Partners analysts assessed the activity of the Russian venture market. Private and public venture funds, PE funds investing in venture capital and investment firms were used as subjects of the study.

The Voskhod Fund has entered the list of investors with high activity. This category includes participants of the Russian venture capital market who made investments from March 2022 to August 2022. Analysts estimate that 29% of funds showed high activity.

Low activity means that the last investment was made before January 2021. The average transaction was from January 2021 to March 2022. It is noteworthy that 39% of participants in the Russian venture capital market have not concluded a deal since January 2021.

To learn more about the study, follow the official Telegram channel of the Voskhod Foundation: https://t.me/voskhodvc

Atomyze will expand the range of investment products to include precious metals and NFT

The Atomyze blockchain platform plans to expand the range of underlying assets to the entire group of precious and some industrial metals and link the issued CFAs to blue-chip stocks. The CEO of Atomyze Russia, E. Frolovicheva, told about this in an interview with Kommersant newspaper.

She explained that this is a motivation tool aimed at the issuer's employees: it is tied to the value of shares, but gives only the right to receive income. New investment tokens for precious metals will be issued this year.

Atomyze plans to issue environmental product passports in the form of tokens for industrial companies. The first prototype may be implemented by November.

In addition, the platform has a product hypothesis close to the theme of art, it can materialize in the form of an NFT next year.

In 2010, I announced my decision to pass the bulk of my wealth to charitable causes. It was an absolutely deliberate move: I have always believed that a person should share his achievements, his success with society.

With this very purpose I created a charitable foundation, which for almost a quarter of a century has become one of the leaders of systemic charity in Russia, a pioneer in the development of a number of programs aimed at supporting education, science, culture, civil society institutions, and it has made a significant contribution to the development of endowment funds.

Over the years, tens of thousands of professionals, active and caring people have partaken in the foundation’s programs and projects becoming its participants, experts and friends. Thus, the foundation has established itself as a reliable charitable organization with an impeccable reputation, a highly professional management team and a whole community of like-minded people. I think it's time to take the next step.

Interros has begun the process of transferring up to 50 percent of Rosbank's shares to the Potanin Charitable Foundation's endowment. The fund's target capital will reach the planned amount of 100 billion rubles, which will ensure the financial stability and long-term nature of its charitable programs. In turn, the foundation becomes an independent charitable organization with independent governing bodies.

I am certain that the foundation team will successfully continue its systematic support of innovative educational, cultural and sports projects, and will develop philanthropy further. And the community of experts that has developed around the fund will help it to maintain high standards of efficiency and transparency.

I am convinced that entrepreneurs should not just allocate funds to charity, but make public benefit a part of their business models. This position is reflected in our investment projects and is embedded in the mission of Interros. The most complete embodiment of this idea is what we internally at Interros refer to as "people's capitalism” - the transformation of company’s employees into its beneficiaries. Modern digital technologies and new legislation on digital financial assets (DFA) make this idea realistic.

For its implementation, Interros transfers up to 10 percent of its shares in Rosbank to an incentive program for Rosbank employees. The program will be implemented digitally: employees will receive DFA on the bank's shares, which will make them beneficiaries of its business.

These steps will strengthen the independent status of Rosbank, in which the main role will be played by it's independent Board of Directors.
These decisions are not my first and not my last step in transferring capital for socially beneficial purposes. It is important for me that my business works for the benefit of people.

The Voskhod Fund invested 1.6 billion rubles in six Russian startups at once

The Voskhod Foundation, which was created last November on the initiative of Interros, invested in artificial intelligence, robotics and anti-fast food. Among the startups that received funding from the foundation:

• Lex Company, which deals with solutions for the development of complex oil fields and operates in 29 countries
• Sciberia project developing artificial intelligence for medical image analysis
• The Qummy project (the name comes from three English words — quick, quality and yummy, "fast, high quality and yummy"). Foodtech startup launches "smart" cafes in a small area without cooks and kitchens,
equipping them with ovens and a freezer with frozen food.

Three more companies that received funding from the fund: a holographic augmented reality system, a platform for robotization of industrial enterprises without the need for programming, as well as a manufacturer of innovative biopolymers for water purification and domestic use.

Learn more: https://is.gd/cv9ccF

Interros presented at the EEF-2022 a project for the development of the tourism and recreational sphere in the Far Eastern region - the Three Volcanoes Park

The active phase of its construction will begin next year, and by 2026 the first tourists will be able to visit the resort. It is expected that thanks to the resort, the tourist flow in the region will increase to 600 thousand people per year. In addition to the appearance of new tourist routes and recreational areas, up to 1,500 new jobs will be created in the region, and taking into account additional services – up to 3,000 places. Revenues to budgets of all levels for the first 10 years of operation of the project will amount to more than 21 billion rubles.

"The business concept of Interros has always been focused on investments that not only bring profit, but lead to the development of new directions and serious infrastructural changes, which, ultimately, has a positive impact on the economy of the region and on the lives of people – who have new opportunities both to improve living standards and for entrepreneurship. We are confident that the Three Volcanoes Park can become the most important driver for the development of tourism – and therefore transport, communication and social infrastructure for the whole of Kamchatka," said Alexander Safonov, Director of the Interros Development and Tourism Projects Department.

Interros invests about 50 billion rubles in the construction of the Park. In addition, the project is implemented on the principles of public-private partnership and it is expected that it will be as successful and useful for the economy of the region and for residents of the Far East as Rosa Khutor is for Sochi.

Voskhod Venture Fund took part in the EEF-2022

On September, 6th, the general director of the foundation, Ruslan Sarkisov, moderated the session "How to win in technological development?". Together with other experts, the session participants answered the questions: what key technologies need to be created in the domestic market, what measures are needed to move from technological survival to sovereignty, etc.

R. Sarkisov noted that cooperation with friendly countries is necessary for the technological sovereignty of the Russian Federation. "Sovereignty does not mean self-isolation. Russia should strive for technological cooperation with friendly countries and be integrated into the global economy."

Yesterday the Voskhod Foundation held a pitch session in the living room of Interros. 10 high-tech Far Eastern startups of early stages spoke to experts in the format of short presentations. When choosing from 150 applications, only 9 projects were selected for participation.

"We were based on a deep scientific or technological orientation of projects with potentially good market prospects not only for the region, but also for Russia," R. Sarkisov explained.

Negotiations with the selected companies will continue after the EEF: each selected startup will be able to attract up to 15 million rubles of investment.

The Interros Lounge opened at the EEF-2022

This year, the Interros delegation is represented by the key areas of its business: Norilsk Nickel, Rosbank, the tokenization platform Atomyze, the Voskhod Venture Fund, and the Three Volcanoes Park, a new world-class resort being created in Kamchatka. The Lounge was opened by the director of the Public Relations Department of Interros Andrey Kirpichnikov.

From September 5 to 8, the companies that are part of the Group will hold presentations, discussions, master classes and report on the development of their business in the Russian regions, in particular, in the Far East.

Business program of the Interros Lounge:

• Presentation of the Three Volcanoes Park – the largest project for the development of the territory in the Far East, which Interros and Vasta Discovery are implementing as part of the national project "Tourism and the Hospitality Industry".

• Master class on CFA from Atomize, the first Russian blockchain platform entered by the Central Bank in the profile register and has already organized 3 issues of CFA.

• A pitch session of the Voskhod Foundation, during which early-stage technology startups from the Far East in the areas of "Agrotechnologies", "Medical Technologies", "Digital Technologies", etc. will speak to the experts of the foundation. According to the results of the pitch session, promising projects will be able to receive investments for development.

If you come to the forum, you can find the Interros lounge in Building A on level 3 (A302). The schedule of our events will be available on the EEF website in the section "Thematic areas" — "Interros Lounge".

Follow the news!

Photo: A. Kirpichnikov

Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that the Russian authorities should be more actively engaged in the introduction of digital assets

"We need to intensively develop innovative areas, including the implementation of digital assets. This is a safe alternative for all parties, which is able to guarantee uninterrupted payment for the supply of goods from abroad and for export," the Prime Minister said.

This agenda is also actively supported and promoted by the Interros Group. The company is one of the investors of the Russian tokenization platform Atomyze, which was the first in the Russian Federation to receive a license from the Central Bank for the management of digital financial assets (CFA), and the founder of the holding, Vladimir Potanin, was directly involved in the creation of the CFA law.

In July of this year Atomyze and Rosbank released the first CFA for palladium, and in August the platform jointly with Norilsk Nickel released a new CFA – "New Money Market".

ver the past five years, the number of shareholders of Norilsk Nickel has grown to 351 thousand people

Now private Russian investors own about 10% of the total authorized capital of the company.

Vladimir Zhukov, the company's Vice President for Investor Relations and Sustainable Development, explains the growth of Norilsk Nickel stockholders by several factors.

One of them is the general inflow of private investments into the Russian stock market. At the beginning of this year, there was a significant increase in the number of transactions made by private investors. Then Norilsk Nickel entered the top 5 in terms of the volume of shares in the holders' investment portfolios.

An additional factor of investment attractiveness was a sharp jump in prices for the company's basket of metals – primarily nickel and palladium. In the first quarter of 2022, they updated historical highs due to an increase in demand for these metals.

In turn, the gradually growing independence of the Russian market from Western capital due to the growing number of Russian private investors helps to smooth out sharp fluctuations in the share price.

Reksoft creates Mining Solutions Department

The new department will carry out a full cycle of implementation, business process changes and maintenance of various IT systems, including industrial safety systems, dispatching, production analytics and quality management.

The department's team will be expanded to 50 employees, and now there is an active recruitment of specialists in the field: solution architects, business analysts, Data engineers, full-stack developers, ML/DS specialists.

"The mining industry is a huge global market and one of the main sectors of the Russian economy. The volume of the IT technology market in the mining industry annually amounts to 150 billion rubles, of which about 15 billion rubles are accounted for by enterprises in Russia and CIS countries with an annual growth rate of 15%. Today, the Reksoft structure includes business units of transformational and product consulting, a comprehensive division of its own development, and now industry expertise in the mining industry has been added to it. The integrated team of the Reksoft Group is able to cover any needs of the SCC enterprises," says Alexander Egorov, General Director of Reksoft.

Petrovax will launch the production of drugs for the treatment of rare diseases

Investments in the project will amount to about 2 billion rubles. Construction will be completed in the third quarter of 2023.

Petrovax has already implemented the first stage of the project and launched the production of injectable drugs with a capacity of 50 million doses per year. Then the volume of investments amounted to 1.6 billion rubles.

The project of the second stage provides for the synthesis of substances and the production of biotechnological drugs for the treatment of oncological, autoimmune and orphan diseases, for example, Fabry's disease. The products will be sold in Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, as well as in the countries of the Asia-Pacific region.

Norilsk Nickel has begun testing a ground-penetrating radar designed to search for water on Mars

The deep GPR is being tested at the Taimyrsky and Komsomolsky mines in Norilsk, where it will help to obtain data on the nature of ore at a depth of up to 50 meters.

The device examines the presence of ore zones and anomalies using electromagnetic signals. It will provide additional information about the geology of the ore body where exploration wells have not been drilled. If the test results are successful, Nornickel will continue to use it at other mines.

The deep GPR was designed on behalf of the Space Research Institute in 1994 to study the surface of Mars: a compact device was supposed to determine whether there is water on the planet. Over the past 20 years, space technology has been used on Earth, and since last year, the device has been gradually introduced into industry.

Atomyze Russia platform launched a new digital financial asset for Norilsk Nickel

The Atomyze Russia platform issued a new digital type of a financial asset - New Money Market (NMM) token. It is a debt-backed instrument that is used for short-term trade finance and highly liquid and safe investments.

NMM is akin to a digital bond: a company, in this case, Norilsk Nickel, issues a digital asset against its debt obligations. The token issuer gains two options for liquidity access:

1) return the funds on the date specified by the terms;
2) sell the token on the secondary market - in whole or in part. This will be a faster path to access funds and pay off the loan obligations or replenish working capital.

At the same time, the digital form of the asset allows it to be split up to any convenient size and easily transfer the rights to the digital assets.

Investors get the opportunity to buy one of the best debt assets on the Russian market in terms of quality and reliability at a discount.

NMM has all the advantages of a blockchain-based instrument: a paperless digital form, instant secure settlements based on a smart contract, absolute reliability and verifiability of the rights of the asset owner, and the absence of intermediaries.

Graduates of the MIPT Master's degree in blockchain were the first in Russia to receive NFT diplomas

The diploma is presented in the form of a graphic video object, which contains information about the graduate student and the year of graduation. The NFT itself has electronic signatures of the participants of the attestation commission, which confirms its authenticity. Together with the NFT, the right of ownership of the object is transferred to the graduate, while the author of the issue is the master's degree in MIPT blockchain.

An NFT diploma cannot be forged, and instant access to it is provided from anywhere in the world, for example, to show your qualifications to a potential employer.

The MIPT Master's Degree in Blockchain has become the first Russian state curriculum to issue non-interchangeable NFT tokens for master's degrees. Previously, NFT diplomas were implemented by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, South Korea's Songyungwan University and Korea's Hoseo University.

We should note that the master's program in the specialty "Blockchain" was launched at MIPT in 2019 with the support of Norilsk Nickel. The basic organization is the laboratory of blockchain technologies "ChainLab" of the scientific center "Idea".

Atomyze blockchain platform and Rosbank have released the first CFA for palladium

The first issuer was GPF Investments (the Russian division of the Global Palladium Fund), an international fund with a portfolio of precious metals, and Rosbank became one of the first investors on the platform.

Palladium refers to both precious and industrial metals, which are used in all technological production, and it is a promising financial product for investment in CFA. The investment novelty of the product lies in the right to a monetary claim equivalent to the market value of palladium.

Atomyze is a key element of the Interros digital ecosystem, which, in addition to Rosbank, will also include Reksoft, Tinkoff Bank and other companies of the group.

Vladimir Potanin, President of Interros:
"I think this is a truly significant event. And not because, for the first time, Russian businesses and individuals have had the opportunity to invest in this metal. Another thing is much more important: the appearance of the first Russian industrial token marked the entry of the Russian economy into a new period — the era of tokenization.

Russian business has been waiting for this day for a long time. For two years, I personally, Interros, our colleagues in the RSPP, representatives of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance have been working hard on the law on digital financial assets. The need for its adoption was due to both the needs of business and the whole logic of the development of the global "digital" economy, in which Russia can and should occupy not just an equal, but, as I believe, a leading position.

The widest range of use, absolute reliability and transparency — all this makes tokens a unique tool for managing liquidity and for investments. Unlike cryptocurrencies, where blockchain technology is used to maximize user anonymization, industrial and other tokens are provided with physical assets, and the use of blockchain technology makes transactions with them reliable, convenient and transparent. The token will defeat the cryptocurrency, push it to the sidelines of the digital economy."

The Reksoft project on automation of the logistics center for the Russian Post in Samara received the national award "Logistics of the Year" 2022 in the nomination "The best digital solution in logistics"

The most modern technologies were used on the project to automate large volumes of processed correspondence. Reksoft has created software based on industrial controllers and equipment management platforms.

At the very beginning, a digital twin was developed, which completely modeled the management of a complex with a total area of 15 thousand square meters, consisting of more than 100 nodes and mechanisms of various levels of complexity. The project includes transportation lines, sorting zones, picking zones, tag and barcode recognition systems, dynamic weighing and automatic size determination systems, automated exits. Thanks to the digital twin, even at the design stage, the team was able to accurately predict every detail of the logistics center's work.

"It is a great honor for us to receive a digital award from representatives of the professional logistics community. It speaks about the industry's interest in innovative solutions that help significantly increase efficiency and optimize costs both at the stage of creating large logistics complexes and during their further operation. I would like to note separately that the entire system is designed and manufactured in Russia and consists of 80% domestic components," Alexander Semenov, Director of the Department of Transport and Logistics of Reksoft.

Kamchatka is infinitely beautiful...

Photo: Sergey Korsakov

Reksoft has been joined by the strategic consulting team of Accenture's Russian division

Accenture's consulting team will be separated into two individual business units within the Group. The new division, combined with the expertise of Reksoft, one of the leading Russian developers of digital solutions, will bring synergy from working together on complex transformation projects that require both expertise in the field of business and technology consulting, as well as the development and implementation of digital solutions.

"The inclusion of employees of a leading global company in the field of strategic consulting in its team fully meets the ambitions of Reksoft to become a national leader in the field of digital consulting and complex business transformation. Interros, as an investor, is interested in the further development of Reksoft and its transformation into a structure capable of meeting the growing demand for the transformation and import substitution of critical business processes in key areas of the Russian economy to the maximum extent," said Sergey Batekhin, CEO of Interros.

Vladimir Potanin, in an interview with RBC, spoke about how the British sanctions affected Norilsk Nickel, how import substitution will develop in the current conditions, and about the resumption of negotiations on unification with UC Rusal

The main theses are in our post:

• In the current conditions, it is more correct to stimulate investment activity in Russia, rather than withdraw capital from the country. The withdrawal of capital in the long term is very dangerous. Even if the temporary withdrawal of capital stimulates the strengthening of the dollar against the ruble and a more balanced exchange rate, it still globally causes too much harm to the economy.

• The sanctions that the UK has imposed on V. Potanin do not affect Norilsk Nickel. Of course, the sanctions put some pressure on the company's partners and counterparties, but already there is a reorientation of supplies to the markets of friendly countries, relations with banks are being rebuilt both in terms of payments for Norilsk Nickel products and in terms of lending.

• Norilsk Nickel has agreed to discuss the merger process with UC Rusal – this will create a "national champion". In addition, the merger will allow to diversify the shareholders and additionally acquire "sanctions stability". The potential merger of the two companies is an alternative to the extension of the shareholder agreement, which expires at the end of this year.

• An important technological step to save the economy will be the use of digital currencies. Perhaps these will be national currencies. Perhaps the states will work out some international ways of digital payments among themselves. But in any case, it will protect not only Russian companies, but also foreign ones.

• Norilsk Nickel will defend each of its employees, from the position of the company's president to any other manager, in order not to maintain hysteria that it is sanctionally dangerous to occupy a leading position in a Russian company.

• The purpose of the sanctions is the desire to knock out competent managers and managers from the Russian business and economy. But if our businessmen stop fighting for their right to do business, for their right to protect their property, then this discredits the inviolability of property rights in our own country.

Digitalization is everywhere: Tinkoff ID technology goes beyond the bank's ecosystem

As the developers explain, this is a service for fast and secure authorization and single sign-on in the RU segment. Tinkoff ID will enable any users to quickly and securely log in to any Runet services. Users will also be able to receive services from the bank's partners – private and public services – in a variety of situations. The service has the most secure authorization in Runet, built on the basis of Tinkoff Protection platform technologies.

Among the partners of Tinkoff ID at the start are about 100 of the largest services of the Runet and Russian business: from key classifieds to government agencies. These are the companies S7, VK, X5 Group, Wildberries, Detsky Mir, My Documents, Technopark, SDEK, TezTur, YouDo, Xiaomi, Svyaznoy Travel, CloudTips, PEAK, Metro Cash&Carry, RTS, Rostender, Banks.ru, MEDSI, Ostrovok.ru and others.

Such a powerful technological solution from the company, which, as Vladimir Potanin stated in an interview, is nothing more than a portfolio investment of Interros, once again confirms the Group's focus on investing in hi-tech, digitalization and the development of high-tech sectors of the Russian economy.