Mayor Yegor Ivanov spoke about the past, present and future of Innopolis.

According to estimates of the Ministry of Communications, Russia now lacks about 400 thousand specialists. At the same time, all our universities annually produce only 50 thousand IT specialists.

Correspondents "Vedomosti" talked with the mayor of the city Innopolis Egor Ivanov.

"Megamind" leads the most interesting quotes from the interview .

About your transition to Innopolis

Last year in Yota, I gradually transferred the affairs to the new management and shareholder. During this period, and over the next year, working in the investment fund, I was constantly looking for new meanings and challenges, really interesting tasks. When I learned that Innopolis is looking for the 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 a project about infrastructure, 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 start-up, although this is a city

On the relationship of Innopolis and Skolkovo

Not sure what to talk about any competition. In order to lead Russia into the leaders of the IT industry, we should have several more projects of this kind. The more there are, the better. And with colleagues from Skolkovo, we have very warm relations, we regularly communicate, exchange experiences.

About why Innopolis is not a science town

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

On agreement with Rostec and other companies

At the end of May, an agreement was signed with Rostec . The corporation will build its office here 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 I-Teco . They will create a subsidiary company that will develop software for creating cloud services. Negotiations with a number of large companies are already in the final stage, and as soon as all the formalities are settled, signings will be officially announced.
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First, we focus on IT companies, primarily from the public sector. IT companies from the private sector should follow them, and then smaller companies and start-ups. We do not want to be limited solely to IT. Innopolis is a city about any high-tech industries.

About benefits for companies

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

About Innopolis University

Two years ago, the university accepted the first students, and now there are a total of 50 students in the master's and bachelor's programs. Since September, the university will begin training for up to 330 undergraduate students and up to 105 graduate students. After a few years, the university will be able to simultaneously study 5,000 people.

Here they prepare for the most popular specialties: computer science, software engineering, cyber security, data sciences and robotics. The teaching staff is leading Russian and foreign specialists 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 have regular practice in companies - residents of Innopolis.

About benefits for teachers and students

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

Training is conducted entirely in English, and some students can still get a second diploma from our partner - Pittsburgh Carnegie Mellon University. In Innopolis, a full-fledged ecosystem has been created for students, which means not only a rich study, but also a variety of leisure activities, as well as the opportunity to do an internship and then get a job in a leading IT company.

On the development of the city

The infrastructure, which has already been built or is in the final stage of construction, is ready to receive 5,000 people. Innopolis master plan is designed for 155,000 people. And our goal for the coming years is to gather the appropriate dynamics in order to arrive at 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 the residents are its customers: it is in this direction that the most successful cities in the world are now trying to move.

About the city management structure

There is a city, it has a municipality and a number of key companies at this stage of development. First of all, it is OJSC Special Economic Zone Innopolis, OJSC Innopolis City owns most of the land in Innopolis, OJSC Innopolis is a company that builds and operates all the campus facilities, and ANO Innopolis University which is responsible for the functioning of the university itself. Under the special economic zone, 200 hectares were allotted out of the total area of ​​the city of 1,200 hectares.

On Investments in Innopolis

The initial volume 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. 4.7 billion rubles were allocated from the budget of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of Russia for the construction of a university campus and the development of its infrastructure. Also, housing is being built in the city for a total amount of 3 billion rubles as part of a public-private partnership. Extra-budgetary funds are also attracted to the development of the city, funding is being provided by investors, private developers and sponsors. The amount of private earnings at the University of Innopolis 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 yourself, there must be an exchange of information. When I studied and lived in Silicon Valley, many startups said that their relocation is not a story about money, about venture capital - all this is abundant in other countries. This is a story about an open community. There at any time you can find any expert, talk to a competitor, find mistakes and change the development of the company. The open system is the main advantage of Silicon Valley. Therefore, I - for openness. This, by the way, is one of the answers to the question of why there are not so many good products in Russia. Because we have a closed country. We speak English poorly, we are not able to make presentations, to build international relations in principle. And this is all very important, there should be a constant exchange of ideas.

On the evaluation of the results of the work of Innopolis

We set ourselves the task for Innopolis to become one of the drivers of the development of the high-tech industry and IT in Russia and to 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 emergence of real products that will be competitive in the international market, and new jobs, and tax revenues of the city, and its investment attractiveness.