Slow response and insufficient monitoring: what holds back technological development in Tatarstan
The State Council have discussed the problems and results of the activities of small technology companies
Tatarstan is not losing its position in technological development — new companies and solutions are emerging in the republic, and the city of innovations is growing. In short, digitalisation is in full swing. On 12 February, at a meeting in the State Council, the speakers discussed the key pillars of the industry's development — technological organisations. As Marat Galeev, the deputy chairman of the Committee on Economics, noted, everything is fine in this part of the region, but there are also problems. Read the details in the material of Realnoe Vremya.
Tatarstan is back in the lead
Tatarstan once again confirms its leadership in technological development — the republic has taken the third place in terms of the number of organisations in the register of small technology companies (MTK). There are 406 of them in the region: 166 companies and 240 projects. The deputy minister of economy of Tatarstan, Dinar Shakirov, told about this at the meeting in the State Council.
“Small technology companies in Tatarstan occupy an important place in the innovation sector, significantly contribute to economic growth and technological development. As of today, 166 Tatarstan companies are on the MTK register. This is the third place after Moscow and St. Petersburg," he said.
The MTK registry itself has two main goals, Shakirov explained:
- popularisation of private financing of technological projects and support of innovation activities;
- simplified “access” to support measures.
Thus, companies from the registry receive some support measures, and not only financial ones. These include numerous grants, an accelerator program, and simplification of some bureaucratic procedures. In turn, there are also requirements for organisations. In particular, annual revenue should not exceed 4 billion rubles, and activities should correspond to one of the 60 types approved by the Russian government.
By the way, the main part of the MTK of Tatarstan — 33% — is engaged in industry. Telecommunications came in second place (18%), while transport and mining came in third (5% each).
53 billion rubles — investments in Innopolis
Innopolis is certainly an important part of the development of technology companies and startups in Tatarstan. Last year, 45 new organisations registered here, said Dmitry Vandyukov, the mayor of the city.
According to him, there are 669 organisations operating in the city with 10,100 jobs in total. At the moment, 7,800 people are in Innopolis every day — 75% of them work in IT.
It is noteworthy that the average salary in the city exceeded the Tatarstan salary and amounted to 154,600 rubles. In January-October 2024, it reached 72,000 rubles in the republic.
“Since the beginning of the city's formation, investments in fixed assets have amounted to 193 billion rubles, 53 of them in 2024. Thirty-one billion rubles were invested in infrastructure, of which 8 billion were invested last year. The vast majority are investments by private investors," Vandyukov said.
He also shared plans for the expansion of the university — the number of students enrolled in the higher education program should increase from 1,500 to 5,000 by 2032.
“At the same time, we understand that it is not necessary for an IT specialist to have a higher education. Not every employer needs it. We need to train a large number of specialists now, and the university is doing this. Since the university was established, we have trained more than 70,000 professionals through higher and continuing education programs," he added.
Everything is fine, but there are also problems.
Deputy Chairman of the Committee on Economics Marat Galeev added a fly in the ointment to the presented barrel. In fact, all the problems of the industry development that he voiced can be reduced to insufficient consolidation of the forces of technology companies, industry and authorities.
For example, Galeev stated some difficulties regarding the digitalisation of industry:
“Of course, we are making progress, but the speed of implementing solutions in a number of industries still leaves much to be desired. The industry continues to steer archaically. There is one well-known company, I won't name it, where they parted with typewriters almost yesterday.”
He cited agriculture as a positive example. Admitting that he did not expect this from farmers, Galeev highlighted the high level of digitalisation. All fields have been digitised, and electronic crop monitoring is underway.
Speaking of monitoring. According to the speaker, the problem also concerns the MTK. In the republic, it is necessary to establish clear and substantive monitoring of their activities in order to increase efficiency.
“Neural networks are doing amazing things now," Galeev continued. “There are very big prospects here. We need to connect the fragments that we have with real businesses from all industries. There are many difficulties. Among them there are fragmented breakthroughs of digital companies. Here they need to be combined.
