Petr Zhukov was an incompetent businessman

The son of the vice-speaker of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov and the company Cognitive Technologies closed the IT-startup, desperate to come up with their enterprise management system (ERP). The attempt to press the German giant SAP in the market failed.
16.05.2018
RBC
Origin source
Swipe by Billion

In early May, the founders of Indigo IT LLC filed an application with the Federal Tax Service to liquidate this legal entity, SPARK said. The site of the company at genindigo.ru does not work, the domain itself has already entered the free sale, it was not possible to reach the company's phone number.

Indigo IT is a joint venture of Petr Zhukov (49%), son of First Vice-Speaker of the State Duma Alexander Zhukov, and JSC Cognitiv (51%), working under the brand Cognitive Technologies. Partners established the company in March 2015 and announced the development of their own enterprise management system (ERP). By 2018, the company planned to occupy 30% of the Russian market of ERP-systems, the main players are SAP, 1C, Microsoft and others, said earlier head of Cognitive Technologies Olga Uskova. The managing partner of the company "Constellation Capital" Sergei Kichatov, who acted as an investment consultant in the deal to create "Indigo IT", previously assessed the joint venture, which the parties made intellectual rights and assets, 1 billion rubles.

Cognitive Technologies representative Nikolai Nikolsky commented on the liquidation of the company refused, Peter Zhukov did not respond to the request of RBC.

Partner with a history

Petr Zhukov began his career in the banking business, in particular, he worked at UBS and Credit Suisse. He became widely known after he fought in London in 2007, for which he was convicted and sentenced to 14 months in prison. In 2011, Petr Zhukov founded the investment fund Indigo Capital Partners, which financed the Internet companies KupiKupon, Webgames, etc. However, in the case of "Indigo IT" he acted as a private investor.

Cognitive Technologies is a Russian developer of software (software) in the field of electronic procurement and document management. In recent years, the company has focused on the development of software for unmanned vehicles, it announced the creation of an unmanned truck together with KamAZ by 2020.

Unwritten law

According TAdviser, the volume of the Russian market of ERP-systems in 2016 amounted to 119 billion rubles. The market leader is SAP, whose revenue from sales of its ERP-system amounted to more than 20 billion rubles. Next come 1C with revenues of 14 billion rubles., Microsoft (3.7 billion rubles.), Oracle (1.7 billion rubles.) And "Galaxy" (1.4 billion rubles.). The figures for the year 2017 are not known at the moment.

All these companies sell proprietary software, that is, software with closed source code, which is the private property of the company. On the site of "Indigo IT", the saved version of which is still available in the Wayback Machine service, it was repeatedly noted that the company creates an ERP-system based on free software with open source.

Simultaneously, representatives of Indigo IT participated in the development of legislative preferences for software with open source. "The political situation is now contributing to the development of domestic solutions," Olga Uskova said earlier. In September 2015, the commission of the State Duma on the development of strategic IT systems announced the beginning of the draft law, which obliged state agencies and state companies to give priority to the purchase of software with open source. The materials of the commission noted that the scheme of using proprietary software is outdated, the private code is unsafe, and the cost of such software is too high. The secretary of the Duma commission was the general director of "Indigo IT" Andrey Chernogorov, and one of the working groups created within the framework of this commission was headed by the National Association of Innovations and Information Technologies Development (NAIRIT), whose president is Olga Uskova.

However, the bill on supporting free software was never adopted. One of the interlocutors of RBC in the IT market noted that this, apparently, was one of the reasons why the "Indigo IT" project did not take place. "No one noticed this company on the market, in fact it did not work for a long time," he said.

This is confirmed in the corporation "Galaktika", which is engaged in the development of domestic enterprise management systems since 1987. "With this player (" Indigo IT. "- RBC) in the market we have never crossed and are not familiar with the result of his activities. Over the past 15 years, various companies have appeared and faded, which planned to create and develop their ERP-systems, "said Anton Malkov, member of the board of the Galaktika corporation. According to him, in general, the market can now note the growing interest in the Russian developers of integrated solutions. "But the creation of a full-fledged ERP-system is very labor-intensive and resource-intensive, which takes tens of years. Our 30-year experience shows that it is not enough to create the product itself - for a full-featured solution the system should be filled with the properties of various industries, which is possible only with a large number of realized projects, "said Malkov.

"For several years we have transformed everyone familiar ERP into digital - with machine learning, artificial intelligence. Now many Russian developers, alas, are busy, in fact, the invention of a bicycle. In the meantime, our development will go forward, providing customers with new solutions and opportunities, "said Natalia Parmenova, General Director of SAP CIS.

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