Mayor of the city Egor Ivanov spoke about the past, present and future of Innopolis

According to the Ministry of Communications, Russia now lacks about 400 thousand specialists. Moreover, every year all our universities graduate only 50 thousand IT specialists.

Vedomosti correspondents spoke with Yegor Ivanov, Mayor of Innopolis .

Megamind provides the most interesting quotes from the interview .

About his move to Innopolis

Last year at Yota, I gradually transferred things to the new management and shareholder. And during this period, and over the next year, working in an investment fund, I was constantly in search of new meanings and challenges, truly interesting tasks. When I found out that Innopolis was looking for a mayor because they were transformed into an urban settlement in December 2013, everything came together. I realized that I want to do this. This is a project about IT, and this is my specialty by education, and I worked in the industry for seven years. This is also an infrastructure project, and in Yota I spent a lot of time on the infrastructure development of 4G networks in Russia and abroad. And this is a new tech startup, although it's a city

About relations of Innopolis and Skolkovo

Not sure if it’s worth talking about some kind of competition. In order to bring Russia into the leadership of the IT industry, we must have several more projects of this orientation. The more there will be, the better. And we have very warm relations with colleagues from Skolkovo, we regularly communicate, exchange experience.

About why Innopolis is not a science city

The goal of the science city is scientific discoveries. And Innopolis is a city in all its diversity. Yes, we have a focus on IT and high technologies, but the task is to create a city so that people of different professions from different regions would like to come and live here.

On agreement with Rostec and other companies

At the end of May, an agreement was signed with Rostec . The corporation will build here its office for 5,000 employees, which will become its key center of competence in IT. It is very important that already at the very start we have such a powerful partner as Rostec. On June 9, a joint agreement was signed with Huawei and Ai-teco . They will create a subsidiary company that will develop software for creating cloud services. Also negotiations with a number of large companies are already in the final stage, and as soon as all formalities are settled, signatures will be officially announced.

First, we focus on IT companies, primarily from the public sector. They should be pulled by IT companies from the private sector, and then smaller companies and startups. We do not want to be limited exclusively to IT. Innopolis is a city about any high-tech industry.

About company benefits

The zero rate on income tax and transport tax for five years, the zero rate on taxes on property and land for 10 years, the rate of 14% for a single social tax.

About Innopolis University

Two years ago, the university accepted the first students, and now a total of 50 students are studying in it in the magistracy and undergraduate studies. Starting in September, up to 330 undergraduate students and up to 105 graduate students will begin training at the university. In a few years, 5,000 people will be able to study at the university simultaneously.

Here they prepare for the most popular specialties: computer science, software engineering, cyber security, data Sciences and robotics. The teaching staff is the leading Russian and foreign experts in the fields of IT and robotics. Educational programs are built on the basis of the real needs of business and industry, and students can undergo regular practice at Innopolis resident companies.

About the benefits for teachers and students

In Western universities, the average age of professors is from 50 years. And at our university, mainly teachers up to 45 years old work. For them, Innopolis University is a great chance to do something of their own, to realize their potential. People come to us for a drive, for the opportunity to become part of a really cool project, of which there are not so many in the world now.

The training is conducted entirely in English, and some students can still receive a second diploma from our partner - Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh. In Innopolis, a full-fledged ecosystem was created for students, which implies not only rich study, but also a varied rest, as well as the opportunity to undergo practice and then get a job in leading IT companies.

On the development of the city

Infrastructure that has already been built or is in the final stages of construction is ready to accommodate 5,000 people. Innopolis master plan is designed for 155,000 people. And our goal for the coming years is to gain momentum in order to reach this figure. In my opinion, Innopolis should develop in the logic of a service company and become the first such city in Russia. The city is a service company, and residents are its customers: it is in this direction that the most successful cities in the world are trying to move.

About the governance structure of the city

There is a city, it has a municipality and a number of key companies at this stage of development. First of all, it is Innopolis Special Economic Zone OJSC, Innopolis City OJSC - the owner of most of the land in Innopolis, Innopolis OJSC - the company that develops and operates all the facilities of the student campus, and Innopolis University ANO , which is responsible for the functioning of the university itself. 200 ha of the total area of ​​the city of 1,200 ha are reserved for the special economic zone.

About investing in Innopolis

The initial amount of investments aimed at creating a special economic zone and building engineering, transport, commercial and social infrastructure from the federal budget amounted to 15 billion rubles. For the construction of the university campus and the development of its infrastructure, 4.7 billion rubles were allocated from the budget of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of Russia. Also, a total of 3 billion rubles of housing is being built in the city as part of a public-private partnership. Extrabudgetary funds are also attracted for the development of the city, financing is provided at the expense of investors, private developers and sponsors. The amount of private income at Innopolis University in 2013-2014, for example, amounted to 840.6 million rubles.

About the benefits of an open city

It is impossible to give birth to an idea in itself; there must be an exchange of information. When I studied and lived in Silicon Valley, many startups said that their move is not a story about money, about venture capital - all this is in abundance in other countries. This is an open community story. There, at any time, you can find any expert, talk with a competitor, find mistakes and change the development of the company. An open system is the main advantage of Silicon Valley. Therefore, I am for openness. This, by the way, is one of the answers to the question why there are not so many good products in Russia. Because we have a closed country. We do not speak English well, do not know how to make presentations, build international relations in principle. And all this is very important, there should be a constant exchange of ideas.

On the evaluation of the results of Innopolis

We set ourselves the goal of Innopolis becoming one of the drivers for the development of the high technology and IT industry in Russia and could have a significant impact on the diversification of the country's GDP. This is the main goal - and it does not have one key performance indicator (KPI): there are many of them and they are different. This is the appearance of real products that will be competitive in the international market, and new jobs, and tax revenues of the city, and its investment attractiveness.