CEO of the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster, Igor Bogachev, gave an interview after the round table that included Skolkovo Foundation, SAP, large carriers, logistics companies, as well as enterprises and organizations of the logistics market. In the interview he underlined the importance of synergy between key partners and startups.
Igor, how could Skolkovo IT startups participate in the market of “big logistics” in synergy with established world companies?
I. Bogachev:
During today’s meeting we discussed a number of issues for software localization (and partially development, taking into consideration Russian specifics) which would untie problematic knots existing between customers of logistics services, freight forwarders and logistics companies. Development of services that can address the challenges at such level is a complex problem. And it can’t be solved only by the service provider, even as large as SAP. In this case a big company forms the basis, the skeleton of the solution. But in order to cover the entire range of problems, external services solutions might be necessary. They are developed by innovative IT companies, our startups. The idea is to expand solutions for the Russian transport sector provided by startups based at the SAP Co-Innovation Lab at Skolkovo. We connect startups, customers of logistic and transport companies as well as our key partner, SAP, as a binding element.
At the round table with participation of SAP, logistics companies, carriers and clients of logistics sector
Could you give an example demonstrating how this mechanism works in practice.
A vivid example of such synergy is Russian Hill, a product recently demonstrated at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum. It was created by our key partner Intel for “KamAZ”. Russian Hill is a software and hardware solution, a supporting service for “Era Glonass”, i.e. navigation, as well as multimedia functions, including radio, phone, media player, social network application, browser and a calendar. It is voice controlled. These and other software possibilities, so called “features”, can make the driver’s life much easier. They can help a trucker driving a KamAZ to relax a bit in order to stay in good physical shape when transporting heavy cargo on long distances. In this case Intel acted as the key partner, seven of our startups worked on this project together with the key partner of the Skolkovo Foundation.
Is it already possible to identify Skolkovo startup projects which can be implemented with equal success in cooperation with key partners?
Of course, there are quite a lot of such projects already. An excellent example of the opportunities for technological synergies for the benefit of Russian Railways, railway logistics companies and their customers is technology developed by Skolkovo startups VisionLabs and Sinesis. These Skolkovo Foundation residents created solutions which allow to regulate the car fleet. For example, recognize car numbers to track cargo movement in the country, and provide information about the location in the centralized systems. After all, in logistics, as you know, one of the main question of interest is where the goods and cars are located at any given time. Our ecosystem has enough companies that are engaged in innovative technologies of visual recognition systems.
We also have a resident in the nuclear cluster, “Ratec Lab”, working on a cargo examination system. They have developed a technology for cost effective analysis of cargo inside the car. This function can be extremely useful for participants in the logistics market, as it allows preventing fraud during shipment. This technology can single out ferroalloys in a car of sludge by way of scanning.
In our ecosystem we also have companies which are engaged in business analytics, processing of big data. Technologies of other residents could be successfully used in synergy with key partners of the Skolkovo Foundation for solution of certain subtasks in complex and large logistics projects.