Finnish Manager Gives IT a Kick-Start
In 2003, the IFC, the financial arm of the World Bank, set up a two-year program to help Russian information technology businesses enter the European computer industry market.
Apr 05, 2005
When he was 11 years old Jari Angesleva, a businessman from Finland who today works in St. Petersburg, was at a youth camp where he burned the shoes of a famous Finnish communist who has since been buried in the Kremlin Wall.
Now aged 36, Angesleva says he is still paying back for his petty act of destruction and defiance by working in Russia as a project manager for the International Finance Corporation.
In 2003, the IFC, the financial arm of the World Bank, set up a two-year program to help Russian information technology businesses enter the European computer industry market.
The program will finish this month, and Angesleva is happy about what the program has achieved.
"Russia's IT sector is growing in Russia at a faster tempo than the national oil industry, about 50 percent a year," Angesleva said Wednesday.
One could wonder how a businessman can repay his unpleasant childhood experience dealing with communists in his country by running a program in one of the most successful areas of Russian business.
But apparently he did, especially when he was looking for a suitable apartment in St. Petersburg when he arrived from his previous job as a consultant in Tallinn in the winter of 2002.
"I lived in a hotel for a month while all the time trying to find an apartment," he said. "It is well known that the prices here often do not correlate with the product that is being offered.
"One apartment we found in city center had rats in it. I have never seen such big rats in my life. We tried to poison them, but they didn't go away."
But one month appeared to be enough payment for the burned shoes - the couple found a nice apartment in the heart of the city near the Five Corners on Ulitsa Rubenshteina.
Hassles with Russian conditions are nothing new for the Finnish manager. In 1984, when he was 15, Angesleva arrived in St. Petersburg with a group of tourists escorted by his parents. Here he got in trouble with a local tour guide.
"It was my first trip abroad and everything here looked new for me. I had many questions, one, for instance, about those [hard-currency] Beryozka shops, opened to sell Marlboros and other different things to foreigners only. Russians were not allowed to go there and there were no such things in the ordinary shops on the street.
"I had got used to all shops in Finland being for everyone, so I asked our local tour guide about it. But she approached my mother and asked her to talk to me because the guide said I asked too many questions. She said that it could get her into trouble because she had to write a report about every day she spent with our group."
Angesleva said that in some ways he liked St. Petersburg more back in the 1980s when it was still called Leningrad than he does now. The appearance of the city was more in keeping with its history. It was not marred by shiny advertisements, long traffic jams and millions of cars polluting the city air every day.
"It was a bit cleaner in a way," he said.
"At that time there were only 1,500 cars in the city while now
there 2 million. They create huge traffic jams that are sometimes three kilometers long. As for advertising, you can see such signs as Megafon or something else everywhere.
"Nevertheless I would suggest doing the same in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt as was done Kiev, where the central street of Kreshchatik is closed to traffic on Sundays and given over to pedestrians," Angesleva said.
But unpleasant traffic congestion is partially compensated by good news coming from Finnish IT businesses operating in Russia. The software business is global and Russian companies have also established their subsidiaries in Finland, Angesleva said.
Examples are Moscow-based company CBOSS that last year bought an e-billing unit in Finland and St. Petersburg-based Arcadia, which founded a Finnish subsidiary last year.
"These are clear signs that the software-based business is maturing and becoming more competitive," Angesleva said.
"Finnish IT companies are quite well established in St. Petersburg. There are several companies employing over 100 talented Russian software engineers and coders. The main reason for this Finnish invasion is the lower salary costs and the high education of personnel. It's a mix that is hard to ignore in this very competitive business."
Finns are not alone in St. Petersburg. Lots of international players such as Siemens have established offshore development centers in the city and are heavily recruiting local staff.
The sector itself, mainly offshore programming, is rapidly growing, recording about 40 percent growth and revenue of more than $500 million last year. According to the local software association, it will surpass the $1 billion threshold this year and this has attracted interest from the government.
"IT and technoparks are now the next hot potato under wide discussion," the Finnish project manager said. "Plans for four parks in St. Petersburg are underway and more are expected in cities like Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk. This is clearly a step in the right direction and follows the path that many technologically orientated countries like Finland and India have taken."
Arkady Khotin, general director of Arcadia, praised the program Angesleva has led.
"Everything was great and super and it's a shame that this program is finishing," Khotin said Thursday in a telephone interview. "We would have been glad if it was extended. Finns are just great."
"They have provided very creative training for our staff and for all the [computer] specialists who wanted to participate in them.
"I only wish that governments of other countries, Swedes for instance, would do something similar, or our own companies," Khotin added.
"Now we're trying to do something similar ourselves." Nikolai Puntikov, CEO of Star Software who worked together with the Finnish program manager on the IT project, said that for Angesleva working in Russia is not just business, but also fun.
"He is very energetic, takes decisions very fast and it's very easy to negotiate with him," Puntikov said Friday in a telephone interview.
"He's got very good representational skills and a great balance between business interests and interests of business partners," he added. "And another important thing is that he loves Russia, so for this reason he does everything with his soul in it. It doesn't happen so often that people running businesses here do it this way, because some just come to make money. He is not one of those people."
Now aged 36, Angesleva says he is still paying back for his petty act of destruction and defiance by working in Russia as a project manager for the International Finance Corporation.
In 2003, the IFC, the financial arm of the World Bank, set up a two-year program to help Russian information technology businesses enter the European computer industry market.
The program will finish this month, and Angesleva is happy about what the program has achieved.
"Russia's IT sector is growing in Russia at a faster tempo than the national oil industry, about 50 percent a year," Angesleva said Wednesday.
One could wonder how a businessman can repay his unpleasant childhood experience dealing with communists in his country by running a program in one of the most successful areas of Russian business.
But apparently he did, especially when he was looking for a suitable apartment in St. Petersburg when he arrived from his previous job as a consultant in Tallinn in the winter of 2002.
"I lived in a hotel for a month while all the time trying to find an apartment," he said. "It is well known that the prices here often do not correlate with the product that is being offered.
"One apartment we found in city center had rats in it. I have never seen such big rats in my life. We tried to poison them, but they didn't go away."
But one month appeared to be enough payment for the burned shoes - the couple found a nice apartment in the heart of the city near the Five Corners on Ulitsa Rubenshteina.
Hassles with Russian conditions are nothing new for the Finnish manager. In 1984, when he was 15, Angesleva arrived in St. Petersburg with a group of tourists escorted by his parents. Here he got in trouble with a local tour guide.
"It was my first trip abroad and everything here looked new for me. I had many questions, one, for instance, about those [hard-currency] Beryozka shops, opened to sell Marlboros and other different things to foreigners only. Russians were not allowed to go there and there were no such things in the ordinary shops on the street.
"I had got used to all shops in Finland being for everyone, so I asked our local tour guide about it. But she approached my mother and asked her to talk to me because the guide said I asked too many questions. She said that it could get her into trouble because she had to write a report about every day she spent with our group."
Angesleva said that in some ways he liked St. Petersburg more back in the 1980s when it was still called Leningrad than he does now. The appearance of the city was more in keeping with its history. It was not marred by shiny advertisements, long traffic jams and millions of cars polluting the city air every day.
"It was a bit cleaner in a way," he said.
"At that time there were only 1,500 cars in the city while now
there 2 million. They create huge traffic jams that are sometimes three kilometers long. As for advertising, you can see such signs as Megafon or something else everywhere.
"Nevertheless I would suggest doing the same in St. Petersburg on Nevsky Prospekt as was done Kiev, where the central street of Kreshchatik is closed to traffic on Sundays and given over to pedestrians," Angesleva said.
But unpleasant traffic congestion is partially compensated by good news coming from Finnish IT businesses operating in Russia. The software business is global and Russian companies have also established their subsidiaries in Finland, Angesleva said.
Examples are Moscow-based company CBOSS that last year bought an e-billing unit in Finland and St. Petersburg-based Arcadia, which founded a Finnish subsidiary last year.
"These are clear signs that the software-based business is maturing and becoming more competitive," Angesleva said.
"Finnish IT companies are quite well established in St. Petersburg. There are several companies employing over 100 talented Russian software engineers and coders. The main reason for this Finnish invasion is the lower salary costs and the high education of personnel. It's a mix that is hard to ignore in this very competitive business."
Finns are not alone in St. Petersburg. Lots of international players such as Siemens have established offshore development centers in the city and are heavily recruiting local staff.
The sector itself, mainly offshore programming, is rapidly growing, recording about 40 percent growth and revenue of more than $500 million last year. According to the local software association, it will surpass the $1 billion threshold this year and this has attracted interest from the government.
"IT and technoparks are now the next hot potato under wide discussion," the Finnish project manager said. "Plans for four parks in St. Petersburg are underway and more are expected in cities like Nizhny Novgorod and Novosibirsk. This is clearly a step in the right direction and follows the path that many technologically orientated countries like Finland and India have taken."
Arkady Khotin, general director of Arcadia, praised the program Angesleva has led.
"Everything was great and super and it's a shame that this program is finishing," Khotin said Thursday in a telephone interview. "We would have been glad if it was extended. Finns are just great."
"They have provided very creative training for our staff and for all the [computer] specialists who wanted to participate in them.
"I only wish that governments of other countries, Swedes for instance, would do something similar, or our own companies," Khotin added.
"Now we're trying to do something similar ourselves." Nikolai Puntikov, CEO of Star Software who worked together with the Finnish program manager on the IT project, said that for Angesleva working in Russia is not just business, but also fun.
"He is very energetic, takes decisions very fast and it's very easy to negotiate with him," Puntikov said Friday in a telephone interview.
"He's got very good representational skills and a great balance between business interests and interests of business partners," he added. "And another important thing is that he loves Russia, so for this reason he does everything with his soul in it. It doesn't happen so often that people running businesses here do it this way, because some just come to make money. He is not one of those people."