Rostec tries on the role of Saturn and devours its own IT child RITE
Rostec is liquidating the RITE company, which was created to promote domestic software abroad. Under the conditions of sanctions, its development has become inexpedient.
Rostec will liquidate its subsidiary, RusITExport, or RITE (Russian Information Technology Export), by the end of the year, according to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
The creation of RITE was announced in 2017. It was assumed that the company would promote Russian high-tech products in the IT field in foreign markets. Then RITE agreed with Group-IB (now divided into international and Russian parts, the latter has changed its name to FACCT), Softline, New Cloud Technologies, BARS Group, NtechLab, VRTech and Etton to include their products in its catalog . According to a RITE representative, private investors invested $2.5 million in the asset. The main areas of activity were to be: the Electronic Government and Smart City projects, integrated security systems and business process automation systems. The greatest demand was expected from Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
The authorized capital of the company is 181 million rubles. The structure of Rostec – RT-Business Development LLC – owns 76% of the company, the rest is owned by private investors through Valkyria LLC. The revenue of RusITExport in 2022 amounted to 928 thousand rubles, net profit – 600 thousand rubles. The maximum revenue of the company was recorded at the end of 2020 – 38.3 million rubles, but at the same time it had a loss of 20.3 million rubles.
As a representative of Rostec told RBC, RITE has completed all the tasks assigned to it and its further development under the conditions of sanctions has become inappropriate. RusITExport was created for a number of specific international projects. At the moment, the company has fulfilled its obligations and is not bound by any contracts,” he said, without explaining the details. At the same time, a representative of Rostec noted that the decision to liquidate “one of the almost two thousand companies” of the state corporation will not affect its business opportunities. He also noted that for the sale of domestic products in Russia and abroad, “new channels are being built”, and RITE employees are distributed among other Rostec companies.
The Russian authorities have been talking about the need for large-scale import substitution in IT for several years, and these discussions have only intensified with the departure of a number of foreign IT equipment suppliers and software developers from the country. But, as experts pointed out, the volume of the Russian market is relatively small, and in order to recoup the costs of creating your own IT products, you need to export them to other markets. Now IT-export is supported by the Russian Export Center (REC), which is in particular responsible for financial assistance in promotion, the Consortium for Foreign Economic Activity (FEA), various associations and organizations. At the beginning of the year, the idea of creating a consortium “Export of Digital Solutions” was discussed at the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
But in 2022, the volume of export sales decreased by 12-17%, to $8.4 billion, Kommersant wrote with reference to the association of Russian software developers Russoft. The reason was Western sanctions and the forced partial or complete withdrawal of Russian IT companies from the US and Europe.
Russoft President Valentin Makarov called the decision to liquidate RITE “quite justified.” “In the context of the application of sanctions against Rostec, it is difficult to act abroad from the position of a “daughter” well-known to all enemies. We have to be flexible and use different channels,” he said.