Why small businesses don’t stay long in Tatarstan’s Skolkovo

“Business is going well, but the city is empty”

In recent months alone, a Japanese restaurant, Untitled resto-bar, a vegan pastry shop, a hobby centre, a cafe, a coffee shop, toy stores, clothing and shoe stores have closed in Innopolis. Lower floors in four residential areas are not inhabited — only individual premises are “inhabited” by businesses. Even federal chains are modestly represented — there are just three stores.

Minasyan stressed that Innopolis lacks food establishments, but the main problem of the city is not this, but the lack of a sufficient number of residents. During the school year, students at Innopolis University mostly bought set meals — inexpensive, but in large quantities, and, as they say, “made money.” If there were a few thousand more people living there, he says, the demand for such services would be stable, but under the current circumstances, as soon as the students went on vacation and the few residents went on holiday, there was simply no one to feed.

The high cost of rent is another problem, according to him (specifically for Innopolis):

“It is practically the same as in Kazan — 1,100-1,300 rubles per square metre this year. With the number of people who use our services, it is not always possible to ‘pull’ it. After all, only about 5,700 people live in the city, of which 1,200 are children. As a result, even breaking even for such an enterprise is often a great achievement.”

According to Sergey Minasyan, the only way to increase the profitability of business in Innopolis, and along with it, to increase the chances of its survival, is to increase the city's population. In the meantime, he says, IT products bring in much more profit than food outlets in Innopolis, and it turned out to be more profitable for the resident to develop another business — he is engaged in augmented reality in the field of technical supervision in construction and shipbuilding. He also said that the entrepreneur who bought Zhora Obzhora, with the beginning of the school year, things went well and even got new clients — employees settling into new premises of Rosatom.

“People have nowhere to live”

“The reasons for the problems in the commercial sector of Innopolis are rooted in both the low customer flow and competition with federal chains,” believes marketer Mark Musin who also tried to do business in the “supercity.” “In addition, it seems to me that the city administration, especially at the stage of choosing a location and development, provides insufficient support to businesses and sometimes even takes a very subjective approach. And we would like to see some kind of support programme for small businesses from it, which, unlike federal networks, work for the economy of Innopolis itself.”

The speaker recalled that initially Innopolis was conceived as a narrow scientific town and only later did its development goals become more ambitious — the city should become one of the significant ones on the map of the region. However, the growth of Innopolis, Musin believes, is slowed down by several factors, the main one being the lack of affordable housing, which is why many workers of technology parks are forced to travel here from Kazan every day:

“They have nowhere to live in Innopolis and there is no opportunity to rent a flat for a long term — there is a queue for them, and this fact, in turn, does not allow business to develop — there is no flow of buyers, consumers of services. Entrepreneurs also suffer from a shortage of people — they have difficulties finding workers to open new start-ups and production facilities. At the same time, not every worker is ready to spend several hours a day on the road to Innopolis from Kazan or the regions of the republic. “

According to Musin, the lack of a sufficient number of permanent residents in the city also slows down municipal services.

He highlighted that due to the lack of specialists and important medical services on site, city residents are forced to travel to Kazan hospitals for medical care, and there are no specialists at the local clinic, because according to the standards based on the population, there are no rates for them.

Is it about the price of square metres?

General Director of ReAgentstvo real estate agency Yuri Chikirov told Realnoe Vremya that at the initial stage, several years before this, he received several offers from investors who built the first floors of residential buildings in Innopolis, but cooperation in this area did not develop.

Chikirov added that there is the same problem with housing in Innopolis — it is not bought up, although there is demand for square metres in the new residential complex in the village literally across the road. The reason is the same — too high prices.

Shaykhiyev emphasised that for this it is necessary to plan in advance where and what will be located — pharmacies, stores, food areas and “so that it does not happen that there are four liquor stores in a row.” In his opinion, commercial real estate must be sold today after carefully forming it in advance.

“Money is money, but Innopolis is not only a story about money — it is a story about image. And I believe that first of all they should have taken care of the tenants, created comfortable conditions for them. Otherwise, it will turn out to be, so to speak, provincial commerce. And in the best case, some areas will be low-profit, and in some they will simply not exist.”

Realnoe Vremya contacted mayor of Innopolis Dmitry Vandyukov and head of the city’s Executive Committee Ildar Khuzzyatov with a request about how many stores, consumer services and catering enterprises opened and ceased their activities in the city in 2023-2024. We also inquired how many people — potential clients permanently resided in the city at that time, and what measures were taken by the city authorities to create attractive conditions for those wishing to live there and develop their business. The request was sent a week ago, but no response has been received yet, the comment will be published upon receipt.