Lanit Puts Faith in Blockchain

IT holding company has found a new investment source

Lanit, one of the top three Russian IT holding companies, is going to launch a separate division for blockchain projects development, namely Digital Transformation Group, which will be headed by Denis Reymer, vice president of Lanit. The plan is to invest at least 100 million rubles ($ 1,73 million) in this new structure. Universa Blockchain Platform, founded in Russia, is going to become the first partner of the Digital Transformation Group.

The Lanit IT holding company is developing a new direction, the Digital Transformation Group (DTG). Kommersant got this information from the company officials. Denis Reymer, Lanit digital transformation vice president, will be the head of DTG. The Digital Transformation Group is going to look for new business models and test the blockchain-based projects, distributed registers and digital platforms. DTG is already working on the platform for fighting against infringing goods and transferring supply chains into blockchain in order to track goods movement from primary producers to end consumers, as it was announced in the company.

Lanit indents to invest at least 100 million rubles ($ 1,73 million) a year in pilot projects, technology testing and projects’ development. The Holding expects that DTG clients will be financial institutions, logistics companies, participants in the telecommunications market and state authorities. “Now, most of the blockchain projects are infrastructure projects or pilot projects,which will not be launched for various reasons, such as being an undeveloped business model, due to the complexity of technological integration in the real business, lack of qualification, lack of technological development of the blockchain platforms,” Denis Reimer enumerates. “Our aim is to create our own product solutions based on existing open source technologies and our own products.”

Lanit is one of the largest IT-holdings in Russia. At the end of 2016, it was third in the rating of the largest IT companies by TAdviser following Rostech and the National Computer Corporation . TAdviser estimated the revenue of Lanit at 114.5 billion rubles ($ 2 billion). According to the Lanit press-service, Georgy Gens is the only owner of Lanit .

In the near future, Lanit and Universa Blockchain Platform will sign an agreement on an exclusive strategic partnership for the joint development and promotion of blockchain in Russia, Alexander Borodich, founder of Universa Blockchain Platform, shared with Kommersant. According to his words, projects will be implemented in the state and commercial sectors for Russian clients. Universa attracted $ 28.8 million during its ICO held in October-December, 2017.

Head of the Russian Association of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain (RACIB) Yuriy Pripachkin said that RACIB had been cooperating with Lanit since November, 2017. “Having separated blockchain as an independent field, the cooperation in transferring pilot ideas into implementation will only intensify. In addition, the portfolio of blockchain projects of the RACIB members already includes a number of projects in the field of government contracts, logistics, financial technologies and cybersecurity,” he noted.

About a year ago, a similar structure for development of blockchain-based products was created by the Qiwi group. As reported by Kommersant, the company intended to spend 100 million rubles ($ 1,73 million) on operating activities of Qiwi Blockchain Technologies (QBT) in 2017. Early March 2018, it was made public that QBT is involved in the development of the blockchain platform for unmanned cargo transportation SKYFchain.

This is the translation of Kommersant article of 20.03.2018. The original can be found here: https://www.kommersant.ru/doc/3578371