New residents promise Innopolis record investments
The Innopolis special economic zone has acquired nine new residents and partners who entered the site with the promise of a record investment of 43 billion rubles. At the same time, the number of jobs created by them, as Realnoe Vremya found out, turned out to be quite modest — only about 250. Among the projects announced by the companies are driverless trains in the Kazan metro, a cloud service for electric car owners, as well as the development of innovative and residential infrastructure in the smart city.
10k new apartments for Innopolis
Renat Khalimov, the director of Innopolis SEZ, called the recent supervisory board meeting “the largest in terms of investments”. The total amount is really impressive: nine new residents and partners entered with a promise to invest 43 billion rubles and create about 250 jobs (in the next 3 years, their number is planned to increase to 500).
For comparison, last year the special economic zone was expanded with seven new residents and two partner companies, the total investment of which was declared 12 billion rubles. At the same time, the number of jobs created by them exceeded 1,300.
As Khalimov noted, most of the investment is made up of projects through the resident company Z-Сity Techno. We are talking about creating large innovative infrastructure facilities in Innopolis and implementing a digital service platform based on it. It is planned to build two technology parks, an industrial park and multifunctional complexes, including entertainment ones. The total area of new objects could reach 190,000 square metres.
“The company also announced that about 10,000 apartments are to be built in the city by 2024, which will increase the city's population to 30,000 people," said Innopolis Mayor Ruslan Shagaleev. “Besides, during the city council, the republic announced the creation of 2,500 new places in kindergartens and about the same number in schools in the city.”
It should be noted that the director and co-owner (66%) of Z-City Techno is Azat Tukhvatullin, an entrepreneur from Almetyevsk, who is close to former Minister of Communications Nikolay Nikiforov, whose company Zion PLC has already built townhouses in Innopolis. The entrepreneur is known for participating in the design of the exterior and interiors of IT Parks in Kazan and Naberezhnye Chelny. Among other things, Tukhvatullin worked on the Pestrechinka brand and participated in the development of Tatarstan stands at field exhibitions in Russia and abroad.
“Unmanned” Kazan metro
Another newcomer — the resident company RailNext (the competence centre for unmanned technologies created by Transmashholding JSC and Locotech-Signal PLC — editor's note) — will develop a comprehensive Ctrl@Traffic system for organising unmanned traffic in the Kazan metro.
According to Bulat Shafigullin, the director general of RailNext PLC, the development, testing and operation of the system is planned to be completed by December 31, 2022. In particular, by the end of 2021, it is planned to complete the development of all components of the system, partially modernise the rolling stock fleet, after which testing and then pilot operation will begin.
“An ambitious goal is being set, which requires significant investment — several billion rubles. In general, our company plans to create 35 jobs in Innopolis, 33 of them are scientific and technical personnel," Shafigullin commented on his appearance in the SEZ.
The unmanned metro system will operate at a maximum train speed of up to 90 km/h and a total number of rolling stock up to 40 pairs per hour. In the future, in addition to Kazan, the system of unmanned traffic can be implemented in the metro of other cities where the rolling stock of Transmashholding JSC is operated.
150 million — from the creators of domestic “operating system”
Also of interest is the project of the partner company Electrifly — the single platform for the owners of electric vehicles and charging stations with technical support. As explained by the co-founder of the startup Lenar Kashapov, the developers want to combine disparate charging stations across the country and create a single access key for charging electric vehicles. The cloud-based solution will give the opportunity the owners of charging stations to remotely manage the facility and charge money for the service.
Another new partner of the SEZ is Rusbiteck-Astra PLC. According to the company's marketing director, Alexander Gutin, their investment in Innopolis will amount to about 150 million rubles over 5 years.
“We plan to create 30 jobs in 2022, in 2020 this figure will be more modest — we plan to have time to find six employees," said Gutin. “I can't say at the moment what new products the developers will be working on, but I am sure that they will refine our products so that they meet the needs of consumers more fully in the new versions.”
Earlier, Realnoe Vremya already wrote about the products of Rusbitech-Astra PLC, which are more focused on defence and law enforcement agencies. For example, two years ago, the company provided the ministry of defence of Russia with the “domestic operating system” Astra Linux. It was planned to replace with it all “enemy software”, namely, the ubiquitous Microsoft products.
Streaming platform and online learning platform
Zenkar PLC also received the status of a resident, which plans to create an application for car owners and companies that provide maintenance, repair and tuning of cars. Also among the residents, there is IT to Business, engaged in the development of software for the technological design of oil and gas and petrochemical industry facilities.
Abiroy received a partner status with the project of the cloud-based integrated personnel management system Cyber Cube, which includes distance learning, sociotechnical research, data collection and visualisation. Another partner — LP Technologies PLC — will work on the platform for virtualisation and streaming of resource-intensive applications and games Loudplay.
In turn, the partner company A-plus will work on creating a digital educational environment for schoolchildren (including taking into account the regional component and the study of native languages), which will become a platform for preparing for the Basic State Exams, Unified State Exams and appeals.
In addition to announcements from new players, the participants of the supervisory board were presented with a project of old-timers of the SEZ — Robosoft PLC. The company introduced the MedBot M-304 robot on a wheeled platform with radiators for disinfection of premises. It can move independently around hospitals, hotel complexes and crowded places, disinfecting rooms with ultraviolet irradiators. Let us note that the cost of its development was about 20 million rubles, and it is planned to sell it for 950,000 rubles.
