Rutube bans, semi-finished products for pizza Novikov Group: news highlights August 17

Russia

• Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin signed a decree on new soft loans for small and medium-sized enterprises. SMEs will be able to take preferential loans for the restructuring and development of production at rates of 4.5% and 3% per year, respectively.

• A division of the Department of Financial Technologies of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation —Fintech Hub— together with the Russian Quantum Center launched a free educational program on quantum technologies.

• The Roskomnadzor structure allocated 57.7 million rubles for the development of the Oculus system. Based on neural networks, it will analyze photos, videos and texts on websites, social networks and instant messengers in search of prohibited information.
• The Ministry of Economic Development expects inflation in the Russian Federation of 13.4% in 2022 and a drop in GDP to 4.2%. In May, the agency forecast a 7.8% contraction in the economy in the base scenario.

Business

• Autodesk will lay off employees in Russia and close the legal entity before the end of the summer. The company’s staff in the country is mainly made up of sales managers. According to the Federal Tax Service, the organization employs 31 people.

• The Russian “Promobot” will supply a batch of robocafe with the “Dunyasha” cashier in the United Arab Emirates. The robot will be localized for the local market and possibly put on a burqa or become a man.

• Moscow TV channel 24 revealed the name of the new Starbucks. The flagship establishment on Novy Arbat was equipped with a Stars Coffee sign – it was one of three trademarks for the registration of which the new business owners applied to Rospatent.

• Game developer Nexters, founded by Russians Boris Gertsovsky and Andrey Fadeev, sold the Russian business for 500 rubles. Nexter’s business in Russia consists of three LLCs and a 70% stake in another company.

• The Danish beer producer Carlsberg estimated the losses suffered by the exit from Russia at $630 million. The corporation reported this in a report, it also says that the producer’s beer sales in other countries (except Russia) have grown.

• Programming training platform LearnHub (formerly LearnUp) will award 20 IT training scholarships to IKEA employees who have been laid off due to the company’s exit from the Russian market.

• Sber has proprietary technology to recognize deepfakes. The bank plans to use them to protect against cyberattacks, fight fake news and protect videoconference conversations.

• The investment holding Tashir Medica bought 100% of Unim, which develops digital tools to help detect cancer.

• Since the beginning of the year, deliveries to Russia of smartphones worth up to 10 thousand rubles have decreased by 56%. Imports of expensive devices fell by almost 40%.
• Arkady Novikov Novikov Group restaurant holding will launch a company for the production of semi-finished products for pizza. For the factory, they are already looking for employees on various recruitment portals.

• Decathlon is selling its merchandise on Ozon. There are 20 thousand branded products on the market. After that, he is going to leave Russia.

Services

• PIK launched a chatbot on Telegram to search for apartments with a mortgage payment price that does not exceed the user’s current rental price.

• The Russian playground VK Play allowed people to post their products in the catalogue; previously, only legal entities could upload games there.

• Internet Search and T.Hunter companies have developed a service to search for a specific Telegram user account using an IP address. You can identify a person by collecting big data, requests from individual users, filtering out unnecessary information.

• The Rutube video host has banned downloading its app on iOS outside of Russia. As the company reported, Apple offered two options: limit app downloads abroad or remove content from state media.