5/5 (2)

This post describes Russian digital platforms or we may also call them ecosystems that dominate the market.

I will put it simple – at the moment Russia has 5 main ecosystems that include services from food delivery to online education. The main ones are Sber (Sberbank), Yandex, Mail, MTS and Tinkoff), other ecosystems include VTB, Severgroup, Rostelekom, Megafon and Alfa Bank.
The best example is Yandex. In the pictures below you can see the number of apps Yandex has.

While it is only the list of applications, Yandex also has a number of websites such as Yandex.Q (analogue of Quora) and Yandex.Flow (interactive online English language courses). Yandex is an enormous ecosystem or “Russian Google” whose solutions sometimes outperform the Google ones.

So how does the creation of ecosystems happen?
The core of the ecosystems is services. Companies create services in the markets which customers use everyday: finance, food, transport, entertainment, and then they build synergies.
At first the mentioned companies create common IDs and subscription options that combine different services within the ecosystem. For instance, Yandex has Yandex.Passport, Mail.ru Group and Sberbank have their own Mail.ID and Sberbank.ID respectively. User identification helps companies to gather incredible amounts of data, analyse it and build new services and propose to customers other relevant services included in the ecosystem. Different Combo+ subscription options serve as incentives for customer loyalty, reduced subscription options for Yandex.Music combined with Kinopoisk create powerful customer lock-ins.

On the top of the identification, companies build the voice assistants. While Amazon has Alexa, Russian Yandex has Alisa, Russian Tinkoff has Oleg, Russian Mail.ru has Marusya. Oh, Sberbank and MTS are also developing their ones, MTS calls its voice assistant – Marvin. What name do you prefer? Through their voice assistants the companies integrate in the devices, into machines, into people homes. It is a new level of integration and each piece of it adds value to the ecosystem. At the moment Yandex’s Alisa is not only a smart speaker, she is also in your navigator and soon she will be able to order Yandex.taxi for you. And the users of Sberbank through Sberbank voice assistant and Sberbank.ID will be able to order food in the Delivery Club, watch films in Okko, order taxi from Citymobil, make purchases in SberMarket and much more to come (Sedashov, 2020).

All of these sound pretty cool if we are not taking into consideration privacy issues and numerous markets that are close to become monopolistic. However, the reason why I decided to write this is a recent announcement of Yandex buying Tinkoff. One huge ecosystem is integrating another huge one. It is exciting! Now Alisa will be able to pay for you through Tinkoff bank mobile app. But is it good? The market totally becomes more and more monopolistic.

Another important issue that I wanted to highlight is not only the monopolistic nature of the market, but also the job perspectives for Russian people. It seems that to earn a decent salary and grow either within the company or as an individual, young talents do not have the real choice. They face only 7-10 ecosystems from which they can choose. Of course, these ecosystems are innovative, constantly evolving, but is this limit of the choice a good thing?

At the moment I can list you two advantages of Russian ecosystems for young talents:
– Ecosystems raise intrapreneurs. Each employee has an opportunity to lead its own startup within the company-ecosystem and enhance his or her salary enormously in several months.
– Ecosystems are able to rotate employees among different industries and functions, thus, enhancing your expertise. Of course, each ecosystem has its own characteristics, but in general they are flexible and adjust to the needs of the market (Egorova, 2020).

Nevertheless, I am struck by the limit of choice as I already have some negative experience with the ecosystems mentioned. And I do not want to work in a culture that I do not believe in. Do I need to seek a decent job overseas? Or create my own venture? What should Russian youth do?

 

References:

Sedashov, N. (2020). How Russian companies build ecosystems? URL:https://vc.ru/u/163530-nikolay-sedashov/105427-kak-rossiyskie-kompanii-stroyat-ekosistemy-chto-proishodit-i-chego-ozhidat

Meduza ( 2020). Yandex agrees to buy Tinkoff. URL: https://meduza.io/en/news/2020/09/22/yandex-agrees-to-buy-tinkoff-bank-to-corner-russia-s-fintech-market

Egorova, A. (2020). Telegram channel @bezaspera.

4/5 (1)

I bet that the majority of you think about health when something bad happens: either you swallowed your leg during a small walk or your skin turned to a different color and you started to panic. The Healthcare system works the same way that your mind does. It is ready to cure you when you are ill. However, can it efficiently help you stay healthy when you do not urgently need cure? Can it help you not to feel sick at all?

It does not. But there is a path of technological advances that will lead us all to this “sickless future” and this road is called preventive healthcare. Not only technology drives the development of that industry, but also the growing awareness and consciousness of people. The main challenge is to create a fruitful environment for this development. To enhance it a bit I will show several examples of your future health: in hospitals and at home.

The first example is your experience with hospital visits. Even before you enter the building all your personal data is pre-entered into the system via chatbot. You know exactly what time your doctor will be free because you can see the updates in the virtual waiting room on the number of people in the queue. You know who you want to visit and what for because you have consulted with general specialists on the telemedicine (e-health platform) beforehand. All the reports on your health indicators are securely and automatically stored on the cloud and you can access them anytime you need. This is the experience of Smart hospitals, they are technologically advanced, automated and provide pleasant customer experience even for the “non-sick”. This hospital is full of IoMT (Internet of Medical things) and instead of huge tubes, microsensors enter your body and report everything they see insight (Gonda, 2018). Moreover, Smart hospitals ensure data connectivity across all healthcare stakeholders: you, doctors, nurses, your insurance company, research centers, medical supply companies, and pharmacies (Chen, Baur, Stepniak and Wang, 2019). Talking about pharmacies, thanks to the connectivity you can order prescribed medicines online! Furthermore, Smart hospitals enable private enterprises to deliver healthcare (D’Arville, Mehra, Boulton and Kapur, 2020).

One example of a private company that can provide you health services at home is Thriva. In fact, it is a company whose mission is to build a culture of preventive health. To accomplish this they provide customers regular medical tests and ongoing analytics on the most important health indicators. So you already can watch your health while sitting on the sofa. What else? Artificial Intelligence solutions installed inside your house could collect data on how you move and what is the color of your skin and make real-time diagnostics of your health conditions (Rob Gonda, 2019). Your AI can be connected with your Apple-watch and other wearables measuring the level of sugar in your blood. All of them can be connected to your diet app, and your sleep app, providing you with personalized recommendations and constantly adjusting your health!

It is almost there…

 

References:
Gonda, R., 2019. Council Post: How Technology Could Transform Preventative Medicine. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2019/07/19/how-technology-could-transform-preventative-medicine/#4e3761a45df1>  [Accessed 15 September 2020].

Gonda, R., 2018. Council Post: Revolutionizing Health Care Part II: Changing Customer Experiences Through Delocalized Care. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2018/08/23/revolutionizing-health-care-part-ii-changing-customer-experiences-through-delocalized-care/#55293b74671b> [Accessed 15 September 2020].

Chen, B., Baur, A., Stepniak, M. and Wang, J., 2019. Finding The Future Of Care Provision: The Role Of Smart Hospitals. [online] Healthcare Systems & Services. Available at: <https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/finding-the-future-of-care-provision-the-role-of-smart-hospitals> [Accessed 15 September 2020].

D’Arville, L., Mehra, S., Boulton, A. and Kapur, V., 2020. Heeding The Call To Reinvent Healthcare Delivery. [online] Bain & Company. Available at: <https://www.bain.com/insights/heeding-the-call-to-reinvent-healthcare-delivery/> [Accessed 15 September 2020].

Thriva – Track and improve your health. 2020. Thriva – Track And Improve Your Health. [online] Available at: <https://thriva.co/> [Accessed 15 September 2020].