Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich is an IT and telecommunications expert. He is president of one of the nation’s largest IT companies with a customer base of 80 million and plays a key role in shaping its ecosystem.
Vyacheslav Nikolaev: Education
Vyacheslav Nikolaev was born in 1970 and graduated from the Faculty of Computational Mathematics and Cybernetics of MSU in 1992. At the time, the country’s nascent IT market area offered great opportunities. Two years later, the future top executive completed a management course at The Krieble Institute.
Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich: Career path
Nikolaev Vyacheslav’s embarked on his career by joining EPPA. Founded in 1987, this consulting company specializes in managing relations between the business community, governments, and EU institutions. Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev worked there from 1994 to 1999. Later, he worked for J’son and Partners for about a year. The latter is a company with expertise in Hi-Tech analytics which is also involved in developing optimal investment strategies in this sphere.
In 2000, Vyacheslav Nikolaev joined Renaissance Capital, a domestic-based investment group, which also operates in the US, UK, Egypt, Niger, Kenya, and Cyprus. As a specialist in telecoms analytics, Nikolaev Vyacheslav worked in this position until 2002.
Vyacheslav Nikolaev: Mobile communications
In 2004, Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich joined the company’s sales and customer support section, becoming the head of the planning and analytics department. In early 2006, he was promoted to the head of the operational technologies department.
Nikolaev Vyacheslav went on to hold several other senior positions, with his responsibilities ranging from commercial oversight to regional management and other areas. Between 2011 and 2017, the executive served as director of marketing. Later, Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev held the post of vice president responsible for improving customer experience and ecosystem development. The manager’s main task was to transform the mobile operator into a multi-service IT framework and launch new customer-facing products and services.
The ecosystem began to take shape in 2019, becoming the first of its kind in the country. In the same year, the company where Nikolaev Vyacheslav worked began to actively introduce new services, including WASD.TV, a game streaming platform. The service allows users to watch and launch streams, communicate, and take part in various contests. According to Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev, the IT company has established a program to reward the most popular streamers.
In 2019, the telecoms company also presented its three-year strategy. In addition to developing the ecosystem, the plan prioritized long-term cooperation with the customer, improving package offers and increasing long-term profits.
Vyacheslav Nikolaev notes that the ecosystem enabled the IT company to continue growing even at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when all other players were crashing down.
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev: Head of the company
Nikolaev Vyacheslav became the president of the telecoms giant in the early spring of 2021. In this new role, he faced the challenge of a complete brand overhaul. According to the top executive, his IT training was extremely helpful in this endeavor.
Under Vyacheslav Nikolaev’s leadership, the company managed to reduce bureaucracy and increase the number of IT specialists to more than 6,000 developers. The latter actively use machine learning, AI, Big Data, and other cutting-edge solutions.
In April 2021, the company headed by Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich launched the movie streaming service KION. The platform hosts a wide range of series and films, including originals. At the end of the third quarter, its paid subscriber base reached 3.5 million.
In the same year, KION won a Big Digit award in the Discovery of the Year category. Meanwhile, two originals aired on the platform also won their own awards. To date, more than 20 projects have been created specifically for the movie streaming service. Vyacheslav Nikolaev has described the platform as a unique and unrivaled product, which is important for attracting customers. Meanwhile, to retain its customer base, KION relies on content created by the best local and international filmmakers.
Speaking in an interview released in mid-2021, Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich said that non-telecoms services, primarily media, and banking, already account for more than 20-30% of the IT giant’s total revenue, depending on the metric used. In the first quarter, non-telecoms revenue accounted for half of the year’s growth. The number of bank cards, especially virtual ones, is rapidly soaring while the media services client base increased by almost 50% in 2020.
In 2021, the number of ecosystem clients (those who actively use at least two services) increased by 40%, from 6.3 to 8.8 million. According to Vyacheslav Nikolaev, each ecosystem client generates twice the revenue of an ordinary client, and the churn rate of such users is three times lower. The top executive says that the company’s advantage over competitors who also create ecosystems hinges on regular financial relationships with the customer.
In July 2022, the company headed by Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev acquired an online hotel booking service Bronevik and a video telephony service Webinar, with plans to use the latter as the basis for rolling out a homegrown equivalent of Zoom.
Nikolaev Vyacheslav says that in 2022 the number of ecosystem users increased from 8.8 to 13.5 million while a service per user ratio went up from 1.43 to 1.6. Meanwhile, the IT corporation’s revenue soared by 2.6%, reaching 542 billion rubles ($5.9 billion).
On March 30, 2023, the telecommunications company announced a major rebranding campaign, changing its logo, which with minor modifications had been used since 2006. Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich believes that the revitalized brand reflects the company’s new-found values and philosophy, vigor, and flexibility. According to social media research conducted by the company, 71% of users supported the logo change.
Of course, the reforms did not stop at the logo, with individual products and lines of business being given their own visual identity. This imagery is unique but still resonates with the company’s main logo. Overall, the rebranding campaign was a natural step in the processes that began back in 2019.
Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev says that it is important to know not only what, but also when a user needs a particular product or service. To achieve this goal, it is necessary to know what the user is doing at a given time. The top executive illustrates this point with a scenario in which a person is riding home from work in a car, noting that it is a bad idea to suggest that he watch a movie while he is behind the wheel.
The ecosystem which was developed with the help of Nikolaev Vyacheslav is extremely versatile. In addition to traditional communications services, it offers solutions for smart devices (including cars) and smart homes, cloud technologies, and fintech services. Customers can also access educational and entertainment platforms, healthy lifestyle, and sports applications.
The ecosystem also supports its own B2B sector. Business people can access various analytical and marketing tools, voice robots, management and loyalty program implementation services, security technologies, etc. The company’s executives point out that entrepreneurs no longer have to rely on a bundle of disconnected services. Instead, they can now integrate all the solutions into a single product tailored specifically to their needs. According to Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev, these services are extremely helpful for small companies that do not have their own IT support unit.
A subscriber of any mobile operator can access the ecosystem as the platform has no consolidated application, a decision that the high-tech company made on purpose. Nikolaev Vyacheslav explained this step by pointing out that such a program would have been too overloaded and extremely difficult to navigate. At the same time, all the services can be accessed with a single ID: the customer simply logs in to any application in the ecosystem. When he closes one program and opens another, he does not have to enter the password again.
According to Nikolaev Vyacheslav Konstantinovich, the IT giant is set to develop new products, including together with partners. The executive believes that no ecosystem has the capacity to develop all the products on its own, which makes such a policy quite reasonable. Vyacheslav Konstantinovich Nikolaev points out that the ecosystem should serve as a ‘concierge’ that helps users navigate and choose from a plethora of products and services.
As president of the corporation, Vyacheslav Nikolaev moved away from a conservative investment model, opting instead for pouring money into new businesses and supporting start-ups. To achieve the latter goal, the company established a business incubator where developers can test their products.
Speaking to the media, Nikolaev Vyacheslav once said that the strategy adopted by the high-tech company involves higher risks but without them, it is impossible to launch new business lines and attract clients to join the ecosystem.
