VTB Bank registers new big data company with Rostelecom
VTB Bank, Russia’s second-largest bank, has teamed up with one of the country’s major telecommunication firms Rostelecom to register a joint venture which will develop products based on big data.
The global revenue for big data and business analytics solutions is expected to reach $260 billion by 2022
The new company, called ‘Big Data Platform’, will develop and monetise these products using artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML) and application programme interface (API) technologies.
It’s understood that the preliminary investment into the platform by both companies is roughly RUB 1 billion ($12.6 million).
The two companies will manage the venture equally, with three representatives from VTB and Rostelecom making up a six-person board of directors.
The joint venture will be accessible via an API to “all interested market players”, creating an environment not dissimilar from a regulatory sandbox.
Retail, telecom, finance, property development and the public sector companies are all welcome to join the Big Data Platform, which promises to legitimise, quality assure and consequently encrypt all data used.
“We are building our core team that will be in charge, among other things, of the strategic roadmap for the platform’s products and services,” says deputy president and chairman of VTB Bank Vadim Kulik.
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“More details about the specific products and services of our joint venture will be revealed at a later date,” Kulik adds, confident that the venture will “significantly expand” the range of big data products on offer in the Russian market.
“Companies need to preemptively and promptly respond to the continuously growing volumes of information,” says Rostelecom
The companies say the first pilot versions are expected to be launched “before the end of 2020”.
“The Big Data market is just taking shape,” says Rostelecom’s business development VP Alexander Aivazov.
“In the modern world, companies need to preemptively and promptly respond to the continuously growing volumes of information that needs to be processed,” Aivazov continues.
Though no exact products have been announced, the companies’ statement says they will be centred around “services based on the specific needs and behaviours of customers in a specific sector or segment”.
In other words, the products will focus on segmenting and re-structuring the large amounts of data companies sit on about their consumers day to day, giving firms better insights into their customers and better ways to market to them.
According to International Data Corporation (IDC), the worldwide revenue for big data and business analytics solutions is expected to reach $260 billion by 2022.
But banks face some challenges. These largely come down to the legacy systems they have struggling to keep up, and the sheer volume of the data they sit on proving hard to restructure.
These will most likely be challenges VTB Bank will look to solve through this new, open venture.
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