technologies

According to a Dow Jones VentureSource study, last year Russia ranked fifth in Europe in terms of investment in high-tech projects. Kommersant found out which sectors investors should pay attention to in the near future.

According to experts, robotics is one of the most interesting trends that you should pay attention to when choosing an area of investment. The robotics market can be divided into two segments - personal robots and industrial ones. The first includes, for example, an electronic assistant from the Russian company Cubic Robotics. The device can understand the human voice, control equipment, home or office systems, read the news, wake you up in the morning and give advice at the right time. In May, large companies became interested in the development: Samsung offered the Russian startup cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence and voice technologies, and KamAZ offered technical specifications for the development of a voice interface for a new truck model. “On the one hand, the market for personal robots has high potential, but it will take another 10-20 years before people get used to them in real life and are ready to put them into their homes en masse,” says Sergei Toporov, senior investment manager at LETA Capital ( this fund invested $500 thousand in the robotics company RoboCV). The second segment of the robotics market is industrial robots. Light industry and services are very promising from the point of view of the development of robotics as an industry. “The robot does not violate the rules of movement and routine, performs all required tasks, is equally attentive at any time of the day and does not get tired,” says Mr. Toporov.

Experts recognize the development of the Internet of Things as another innovative trend—the emergence of “smart” household appliances that can interact with each other and the environment. At the end of the year, Gartner estimates that 3.75 billion devices will be connected to the Internet, next year their number will reach 4.88 billion, and in 2020 there will be 25 billion devices. At the same time, the amount of all consumer spending on services related to the Internet of things will increase from $69.5 billion in 2015 to $263 billion in 2020. This new market will develop only if there is an established infrastructure - here, in the same way, many prospects and areas for work arise. So in the foreseeable future, projects in the field of energy-efficient microelectronics, development of communication technologies and protocols, as well as solutions in the field of identification and protection of transmitted data will be in demand. The real Klondike, according to many experts, may be security technologies for the Internet of Things. After all, it is obvious that the number of threats posed by the widespread proliferation of “smart” and “communicative” gadgets is comparable to the benefits that these things can bring.

The third global innovative trend is the active use of so-called Big Data, the development of solutions for extracting valuable information from it and using it correctly. According to IDC forecasts, the volume of the global big data market this year will reach $16.1 billion. 45% of this amount is infrastructure: servers, data storage systems, etc., 24% - software. According to Pitchbook, over the three quarters of 2014, $4.82 billion was invested in big data projects. 16.9% of this volume was attracted by database software developers. This is the second most promising direction, because the volume of data is constantly growing, so more and more efficient methods of processing it are required. Projects on the applied use of big data seem to be the most promising for investors: they accounted for 17.5% of the total amount. This is explained by the fact that companies operating databases of already processed and very specific applied information, be it data on retail, medical topics or weather conditions, quickly gain a large number of clients. “Today, competencies in the field of Big Data allow us to collect unique data about clients and help identify promising directions for the company’s development. Unlike classical business analytics tools, when individual data is structured and within minutes or hours they are converted into standard reports, working with big data allows you to structure absolutely all the company’s data and transform it in real time into any format, report or system. Big Data is petabytes of data that are carefully accumulated, are not duplicated and are available at any time in a convenient format. MTS has powerful data centers. which are capable of aggregating big data and working with it to form tariff offers, develop communication networks, improve the quality of service and develop innovative services,” says MTS OJSC representative Dmitry Solodovnikov.

Ilya Arzumanov

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The development and production of personal robots is one of the most promising areas of investment

Robots are waiting for money