Top Stories August 8: Russian IKEA suppliers get creative

RETAIL

Russian producers that have been manufacturing finished or semi-finished products for Sweden’s furniture giant IKEA have taken to Yandex’s marketplace Yandex.Market to sell their goods. A list of 11 products, which will likely be joined by more former IKEA suppliers, includes mattresses, furniture, home accessories and fabric. [Source: RBC]

Chinese information and communications technology company Huawei has stopped sales of smartphones and other electronics in Russia through its online store and mobile app in addition to the earlier closure of offline stores in the country. While the company doesn’t comment on the move and its plans in Russia, it is reportedly firing considerable parts of its local staff. [Source: Cnews]

The Russian market of smart assistant devices surged by 70% in the first half of 2022 to 780,000 devices compared to the same time period a year ago. Industry experts say the niche is far from the point of saturation as the average cost of the devices keeps falling. [Source: Ixbt] 

INNOVATION

A Russian hi-tech startup Yablochkov drew $500,000 from the Innovations Facilitation Fund to design an e-vehicle charge station. They plan to launch the first station capable of simultaneously charging six electric cars in just 10 minutes in 2024 in St. Petersburg. [Source: RB]

Roselectronica, a subsidiary of state corporation Rostech, tested a monitoring and aircraft protection system designed to prevent the collision of planes and birds. The system’s rays detect up to 100 birds within a 21-kilometers radius around an aircraft and make them stay at safe distance from the vehicle. [Source: RB]

SCIENCE

The Zelenograd Nanotechnology Center located in the Moscow economic zone “Technopolis” will manufacture microelectronics based on gallium nitride (GaN) transistors starting from 2023. The company has completed the experimental production line of these transistors in Russia. [Source: Spark]

Recent Google Earth images suggest Russia is building a new laser system called Kalina capable of “targeting optical systems of foreign imaging satellites flying over Russian territory.” The unit is a part of the Ministry of Defense’s Krona space surveillance complex located in the northern Caucasus region. [Source: The Space Review]

REGULATION  

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications regulator, has blocked websites of Patreon, a membership platform for content creators, and Grammarly, an online grammar checker. The reasons cited were pages calling for peace or against the war in Ukraine. [Source: RBC]

The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation opened a criminal case against Yandex.Eda, a service of an Internet company Yandex, over a leak of the service’s clients’ personal data in March this year. Yandex said in comments to the media that the company contacted authorities as soon as the data loss was discovered, noting that a rather limited range of data was breached. [Source: RBC]

ECONOMY UNDER SANCTIONS

The Russian government has loaned a total of $2.16 billion to the Internet giants Yandex, VK and online marketplace Ozon to help the companies pay the holders of their Eurobonds. The holders have got a right to demand the full payment of the debt after trading of bonds, shares and global depositary receipts of Russian issuers have been suspended due to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. [Source: Kommersant]  

Demand from European clients for industrial robots and androids of the Russian company Promobot has declined by 80% since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine compared to the pre-war period. Oleg Kivokurtsev, the co-founder of Promobot, says the reason is the so-called “cancel culture” as European businessmen are afraid of a damage to their reputation due to their cooperation with a Russian company. [Source: Interfax]

SOFTWARE

The Russian IT sector’s revenue increased by 63.7% in the first quarter of 2022 compared with the first quarter of 2021 to $9.3 billion driven by a demand for software. According to the Russoft association’s forecast, the sector’s turnover will not fall significantly in 2022 despite the sanctions and the fact that 15,000 to 20,000 IT specialists have left Russia after the start of the war in Ukraine. [Source: Kommersant] 

Yandex, a Russian Internet giant, designed prototypes of two robots doing standard warehouse work that will reduce manual labor at two Yandex’s own services – online marketplace Yandex.Market and food delivery service Yandex.Lavka. One of the robots is capable of doing inventory of stocks, while the second will move and sort stocked items. [Source: Spark]

DEALS 

Member of board of directors of Yandex, the former head of the president administration, Alexander Voloshin and the founder of Genome Ventures company Alexander Smbatyan have acquired a 50% stake in Bloomtech, a startup providing bank-to-bank safe and reliable information exchange about accounts of consumers in order to reduce the risk of fraud. Experts say that Voloshin and Smbatyan are political heavyweights who can create favorable conditions for Bloomtech in the Russian banking space despite the challenging environment. [Source: RB]

The founder of Dodo Brands, a Russian global pizza delivery franchise, Fyodor Ovchinnikov has sold its stake in Dodo Pizza UK to David Christopher Sweeney, a local senior manager of the company. Dodo Brands had troubles with the expansion in the UK due to financial challenges associated with the war in Ukraine, Forbes reported. [Source: Forbes]