IT in Armenia

Today the Information technology industry is the most dynamic and fast-growing segment worldwide that changes if not hourly but daily. To track the changes, one should keep with the pace of tendencies, follow the market giants and analyze market demands. As for IT, the global industry was shaken by the COVID-19, and it still carries out transformations to align with the new reality. Even though the segment took a small step back, the overall revenue still registers billions of dollars in revenue. More precisely, for 2021, the global IT market is projected to reach $5 trillion.

And what about the Armenian IT industry?

IT in Armenia: Overview

In the past ten years, the segment had undergone dramatic changes becoming, if not the most, but one of the most significant industries in the country's economy. To contribute to the segment's growth, until 2022, a tax exemption is granted in applying 0% profit tax for IT companies with employees not exceeding 30 in the count. The adoption of the law resulted in a significant increase in the sector in terms of the number of newly established companies. The market size grew significantly from 2008 to 2018 at a CAGR of 27% $ 922.3 million in 2018.

Local companies have adopted two main business development strategies. Companies operate outsourcing services or produce and sell their products on the local market. Each company implements the strategy that best suits its capacity and talent. In both cases, Armenian IT companies managed to gain the reputation of the resource of bright-minded talents. World-leading names like Microsoft, Intel, CISCO, IBM, Synopsys, and others already have a physical presence in Armenia with the engagement of the brightest minds. Local companies are now engaged in thousands of international projects worldwide, contributing their potential to building a better future. Let's take several big projects of the Armenian IT industry and evaluate the whole industry through the prism of their success stories.

IT in Armenia: PicsArt

One of the most inspiring success stories of Armenian IT companies is PicsArt. It started as a startup and is now one of the world's top photo editing apps for iOS and Android platforms. So the story of PicsArt is very trivial. The team of 10 people, primarily students, created an app that helped the users to edit photos. The application was built in 2011, and it was only available for Android devices. Two years later, the app was deployed on AppStore, and in the same year, the app already got 90 million installs. Today the application has 150 million monthly active users and over 1 billion downloads. It has one of the largest open-source content collections with free-to-edit photos.

In 2020 PicsArt launched an AI lab along with the American University of Armenia. The faculty researches the latest technologies like machine learning and computer vision.

In 2015, the company was ranked fifth in the Forbes Top 50 Startups of 2015. Slowly, the startup grew into a large corporation with offices in Beijing, Tokyo, LA, San Francisco, Moscow, and Armenia. At the moment, PicsArt has four mobile apps and several browser tools for photo and video editing.

IT in Armenia: TUMO Center for Creative Technologies

The role of IT in the country's development is invaluable; this is why the segment is treated most seriously. Raising the intelligent generation of professionals is the only way to have a talent pool. This way, Armenia and the IT segment will become attractive for the investments.

TUMO - the center of creative technologies has become the venue for the new generation of bright minds to realize their potential, adopt modern technologies and have a clear vision for the future. TUMO is a massive trampoline for teenagers in the digital world, giving them a real chance to gain experience in web design, graphic design, programming, etc. Project labs are led by leading technology and design professionals all over the world. Every year TUMO hosts the instructors and gathers hundreds of participants from the IT segment of Armenia. 

What is the goal of TUMO? The aim of the center is the fusion of advanced technologies and art, with the help of which teenagers – future experts in the fields of information technology, web design and graphics, programming, etc., will be able to realize themselves in the digital world and become competitive specialists.The learning program of the center is based on self-learning activities, project labs, and workshops covering 14 learning targets. The students can combine them into personal learning paths and align the program to their preferences. The short activities are aimed to maximum engage students in the process, inspire and build skills. With hundreds of activities and opportunities, no one is bored in TUMO.

TUMO Center attracts thousands of students from 12-18 years, where they have access to tools and resources for the development of skills and knowledge that are not traditionally taught at schools. Thus, having access to the latest technologies in web design, programming, robotics, animation and film, teenagers have an invaluable opportunity to expand the boundaries of their knowledge for free! The classes are conducted either by upscale professionals during regular sessions, or by invited masters and instructors during different narrowly specialized workshops. As mentioned above, training in TUMO is completely free!

TUMO has hubs in Yerevan, Gyumri, Dilijan, Stepanakert, and TUMO boxes located all around Armenia. The flagship of the TUMO center was opened in Yerevan in 2011. The IT Park has become one of the most popular places for residents. 

IT in Armenia: Digital Caramel

Another noteworthy member of Armenia's IT segment is Digital Caramel, the first native network advertising in Armenia that has already expanded its services far beyond Armenia, including Russia, CIS, Western Europe, and Asian countries. The advertising technology company offers effective website monetization services, implements solutions that help to increase the profitability of standard advertising systems significantly.

The company has attracted the best specialists that create value for the company and the partners. The proven methodology of promoting pages already brought the company over 1000 partner websites where the strategy of Digital Caramel provides the highest monthly level of income to the clients.

The service is connected to the largest SSP in the world. Among the partners are Yandex, Google, AppNexus, OpenX, RTB House, Criteo, etc. Digital Caramel offers partners maximize monetization by configuring the whole monetization system. The company also provides the services of attracting direct advertisers, provides a free Ad management system to manage ads, and configures Header Bidding for websites.

IT in Armenia: ProDigi Digital Marketing Production & Services

Digital marketing has come to replace traditional marketing strategies taking the customers to the digital platforms and gaining engagement through various tools and techniques. The way the IT segment transforms and develops rapidly, digital marketing trends and techniques are also changed. ProDigi digital marketing products and services agency is one of the top companies in the local IT sphere that delivers quality beyond the local market.

The company, founded in 2017, had a far more extended digital marketing background and managed to gain over $5 million in revenue in the first year. Back in 2017, ProDigi was only engaged in social media marketing cooperating with local businesses. Today, the services include a broad spectrum of social media marketing and video production, digital banner production, and branded game creation. As for video production, ProDigi is specialized in producing Explainer, Educational and Commercial, Product videos, Webinars, Vlog videos, and Social Media Videos. The projects are created both live-action and animation style videos. The team works with Cinema 4D, Spark AR Studio, Lens Studio, Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Google Web Designer. 

At present, the company is working on new products and is planning to expand cooperation geography, including Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, the US, Canada, and the UK.

IT in Armenia: Krisp

The potential of local IT professionals can be measured with recorded achievements, and one of such names is Krisp, a universal app, the revolutionary solution in remote communication. At the moment, the app already has over 100 million users

2019 changed the working processes of hundreds and thousands of companies and businesses, forcing them to go remote. Online meetings have become an indispensable part of an everyday workflow that could be inefficient and unprofessional due to the background noise. Krisp has developed a technology solution based on AI that works on bi-directional noise removal and is seamlessly integrated into other platforms.

Krisp proved to be an effective and valuable solution far beyond the local market. In 2020 the company was included in the list of Cool Vendors in Digital Workplace Programs and Applications by Gartner. The same year, the company was listed in AI 50: America's most promising Artificial Intelligence companies by Forbes.

Conclusion

A small country with a huge potential and talent pool is a new market for investments. Working on global recognition and discovery, Armenia will one day become a viable competitor. In this article, the companies and organizations mentioned are only a tiny part of the IT companies in Armenia that are worth being internationally recognized for their cutting-edge ideas.

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