VK Cloud in Kazakhstan, Russian OS on imported laptops: the main thing on April 25

World

• Starting in July, Kazakhstan will allow the transition to a four-day work week. Employers will be able to alternate “short” and “full” work schedules as agreed, Tengri News writes.
• Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau said that the eleventh package of sanctions against Russia would not be introduced before the second half of May, TASS reports.

Russia

• The government withdrew from the State Duma a draft submitted the day before to increase the tax for Russians working abroad, TASS writes. The government said the document “needs to make technical clarifications.”

• The Ministry of Economy supports the extension of the special tax regime for the self-employed from 2028, Izvestia has reported.

• Only 5% of Russians buy goods online, the remaining 95% prefer to go to stores, a study by the X5 Group parcel service showed. Most often people 30-40 years old go shopping, of which there are more women than men. And the most demanded products were dairy gastronomy and groceries.

• The Ministry of Digital Development has prepared a bill similar to the European WFD. It is expected to be submitted for consideration during the autumn session of the State Duma. At the same time, the department expects the law to pass in the spring. Department head Maksut Shadayev believes that Apple will not boycott the new rules.

Business

• Not8 The Dutch IT company from Russia has attracted a 150,000-euro investment loan from the Dutch bank Rabobank, project co-founder Yaroslav Medvedev told RB.RU. The company will allocate funds to expand the team and improve the functionality of the product.

• The Rostic flagship opened in Moscow at the KFC site on Tverskaya-Yamskaya. Soon 25 restaurants will open in Moscow, then 15 restaurants in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous District, and then all restaurants in the Moscow region.

• Liberty Holding Corp. acquired a 100% stake in the rail and air ticket purchase services Aviata and Chocotravel from the Choco holding company. The purchase is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
• Russian retailers may be required to pre-install national operating systems (OS) on computers and laptops supplied to the Russian Federation.
• The growing popularity of e-commerce encourages entrepreneurs to actively launch their own stores to trade on the markets, Kommersant writes.

• Avtodom closed a deal to buy Russian assets from Mercedes-Benz. In the near future, the distributor intends to announce a technology partner and plans to resume production at the Esipovo site.

• Softline announced the creation of a unified educational ecosystem “Softline Academy”. It will combine the technologies and expertise of the IT Academy, which the group acquired in 2022, and the Softline Training Center.

Services and technologies

• The number of accounts registered on VK Play has reached 16.5 million, the site reported. At the same time, the monthly active audience at the end of the first quarter of 2023 amounted to more than 13 million users. Since the VK Play Live launch of the beta test at the end of November, more than 20,000 streamers have joined.

• Citydrive launched corporate access to carsharing in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Sochi. The company may rent any car in the employee service park.

• QazCloud and VK Cloud launched a localized cloud platform in Kazakhstan. Local companies will be able to use infrastructure services (IaaS), as well as platforms to develop digital solutions, tools to work with big data.