Music. Welcome to another episode of the brand called you a podcast and video show which brings you role models, sharing their leadership, lessons, knowledge, experience and wisdom. To date, we've spoken to hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. And if you're new to the channel, please subscribe so you won't miss a new episode. I'm your host, Fritz bussemarker, and today I'm delighted to speak have a conversation with Hayk Karapetyan Hayk. Welcome to the program.
Hello. Thank you for your invitation. Thank you for having me. Hayk . Let me briefly introduce you to our audience. I will get to know you throughout our discussion. You are very much a
strategic and seasoned CEO coo with extensive leadership experience in telco, finance and banking, and very much on the digital side, educated both in Russia and in the UK. And you work and live in Yerevan Armenia, and also the key reason to reach out to you. You're also the executive director of the organization committee for the World Conference on innovation technology, which will take place October, later this year again. Hayk Thank you for making time to talk to the brand called you. I'm just making assumption here, most people probably have not been able to visit Armenia yet. Who watch this program? If you would have to promote Armenia, why should people want to go to Armenia? So, yeah, thank you. Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity
to talk about Armenia and to say why visitors, they should come and discover for them, Armenia. First of all, it's a good occasion to combine business with pleasure. So first of all, these four days, Armenia will be the the center of innovation and technology in at least in our origin. And you can come and listen to the leaders of the industry about AI implementation this year. We just the headline of this event is the power of
mind AI beyond limit within within ethics. So we are going to talk very broadly about any kind of implementation, AI, starting from agriculture up to space exploration. So any professional can find the interesting topic for direct dedicated to them. So you have very, very different various topics, about health care, about sustainability, about finance, cyber security, about robotics, automatic chip design, and they can find what something interesting completely for them. The second point, why they should come to and visit Armenia, because Armenia is a new place, I mean, for a discovering with very strong history heritage, and it will be quite interesting for them, the country which adopted Christianity first in the world in third century. So we have
very, very impressive place to go and see this, places like sightseeing also will be very pleasant in that period of time because of weather, it was with quite smooth and Yerevan is very, very impressive city with clubs, restaurants, very delicious food. So all kind of, all kind of arrests are applicable to this country. We have very low rate of restriction connected with with the obligations, almost majority of countries, they don't have obligations connected with Visa for coming to Armenia, and that's why, I guess it's the best way to spend time to for both for business and for discovering a new country. Okay, well, I am, I'm, actually, I will be attending this summit as well, so I'm looking forward to that. And a couple of things before I
move on. I want to talk, also talk about your own personal background. But what's the national dish of Armenia and the national drink, I guess I can call it Dalma. It's, it's a meat rolled in
grape leaves. So one of them, so it's quite I do believe that you can just confess that you like Armenian fruit as well. And you should also welcome our. Uh, potential attendees and invite them to Yerevan. Why? Because you they can do the tech in
mountains. So in 2019 it was so successful that with they provided this opportunity to Armenia the second time for 50 years. So it's all about it's because of this success. Okay, good. Now it's good to know you mentioned a couple of things which would have to explain to the audience. So we'll come to the visa a little bit later. I first want to talk a little bit about your own personal background, because in my very brief introduction, I told you that you are now in a position that you have extensive leadership experience in number of industries. But how did you become a professional in the IT
industry? What attracted you to that industry, or were you dragged into that industry? How did that start? Yeah, for sure, I just graduated from Bauman Technical University in Moscow, so my first profession is the IT engineer. So that's why it's quite close to me. But all the way, I worked as a commercial person in different positions. Last few positions were Chief Commercial Officer of second largest mobile operator in Armenia, the CEO of national postal operator of Armenia, high post. Before that, in Moscow, I was the head of megaphone bank. It's new bank, so later on, I mean, last year, I just started a master's program in Oxford University.
The topic was, I mean, program was AI for business. So now I am making my masters in this domain as well. I have own startup. I'm co founder of startup satisfai. Just connected with AI, this customer experience management platform, and I got the invitation from our colleagues, from Chairman of UAT union of advanced technology Enterprises for Armenia alike, yes and and I couldn't stand but not to what, not to accept this invitation, because this great event, and I would like to be the part of this event and do everything to show that Armenia is the regional tech leader, the place you can move your businesses, move your R and DS because, not because of price, because, for sure, there are countries with low lower prices for outsourcing or something like that, but Armenians, they're complex problem solver solvers, and we have evidences for that now, currently In Armenia, the giants of cheap design industry, like Nvidia, AMD, Siemens, synopsis, all of them, they have huge branches here, and Armenians solve here very complex problems, and the result of their work just spread all around the world in these chips, you know. And what I want to say
that the one of the most important parts of this cocktail, let's say it's talents. We have good talents here who can solve complex problems. We have quite good, quite, quite, quite good weather. So you I mean living
life in Armenia is pleasant. We have good food, special tax regulation for IT companies, and this is a reason why majors come to Armenia. And I just invite other companies to go, to come and to discover for them, Armenia, later on, either open new companies here or bring their branches move to Armenia. Okay, now you said something quite interesting. I want to
follow up on that a little bit. Armenia is well known for being complex problem solvers. Is there any cultural or historic reason that you have that you are now known as complex problem solvers? Old nation, you know, we had, we met many, many obstacles in our way. So we survived. And all the way we tried to solve these
problems, maybe that bring us to this skill. I mean upgrading these skills. And by the way, during Soviet Union, you know. Other Soviet Union. Armenia was the Silicon Valley of Soviet Union. It's called. It was called Soviet Union Silicon Valley. The first Soviet Union computer was also created in
Armenia, and that's why we have very deep culture in creating new technologies in it and in fundamental science, because we have very good mathematicians and physics, physicists, and this is a base of having good IT specialists. So we prepare good mathematicians and physics. Got it. Is it and by the way, how many people roughly live in Armenia? Roughly 3 million people. Okay, so and to our IT domain just shows
double figure growth many years in a row. And this is a one more reason why we decided try to get the second time this event in Armenia. WW, let's dive into that a little bit more to explain that to our audience, because you mentioned the witsa, what does the witsa stand for, let's say it's a union of unions, you know, it's alliance of IIT unions in the world. And UAT is a member of this alliance. And each year this event, like Olympic Games. You know, it moves from country to country. This time. We have this
where we are very proud that the second time they gave this opportunity to Armenia to organize the event. Okay, now, and I'd say it's a world Innovation and Technology Services alliances. So it's they cover, they cover. More than 80% of all companies in the world connect innovation and technology so very much the who's who in IT industry come together there. Now you mentioned the theme. The overall theme is the power of mine. AI beyond limits within ethics, I like that last one within ethics, to keep it safe and accountable. But it also why
the focus on AI as the IT industry is much, much broader than just AI. Why that explicit focus? First of all, it's not about it. It's about innovations and technologies. World Congress on innovation and technologies. This is a name of I mean, this Congress. WCh, the
unfortunately, Armenia cannot create trends, world, global trends, and this year's trend, as you know, it's AI, so we try to be in the trend. And that's why we are going to talk about AI because AI revolution did change almost any industry, in education, in military, in any kind in even in space exploration. That's why so it touches hearts, and it can be reasonable to talk about that here in Armenia, I also have two major two companies, Pixar and Crisps crisp their their valuation is more than $1 billion so they use, in the fund, in the in their product, AI is considerable part. So we do, can we do? Can talk about this technology, because Armenia is in that domain. So we can show results of using AI here in Armenian companies. I mean, in two unicorns, they are good example of using AI.
Great and but you have a roughly, if you look at the working population in Armenia, you have an idea of how many people work, directly or indirectly in the domain, in the IT spaces, is it significant? It's significant. The numbers of these people is growing based on two factors. First was, after, you know, the starting the war in Ukraine, we have people from Russia who just moved to Armenia in order to just relocate it to Armenia to work. Majority of them connect. Are connected with IT industry and the second more
more, which. Has roots. I mean Armenian roots. It's a special program. It's called armat. Armat, if, if we can translate it, it's about roots. It's called roots. It's special program for for pupil at school for free. More than 10,000 people each year. They just go to these laboratories, and in that way, association, I mean, a union of advanced technology enterprises. They create, develop their further further
industry members, starting from the scratch from school. So each year, more than 10,000 people just come to this industry because of this program. Okay, that's good to know now, one because we can read in the news AI is the dominant topic in our industry.
Can you remember when you personally realize, oh, this is going to be big. What was the example or the story or the experience which made you realize, I now understand what everybody else is talking about in the AI domain. So for me personally, it started earlier than char GTP just appeared, and it was showcase for everyone because I applied for this program, as I said before, the main reason of this revolution, not only the way of implementation this technology, but the price of computational power. So as it was provided in our lectures, from from professors in Oxford University, the main formulas and mathematician for all these all these programs were developed in me in the mid of 19 century. So
in 1956 something like that, the only thing was just barrier for spreading this technology was the price of computational power and development of technologies in cheap design and and consumption of data and ability to store a vast amount of data collected from smartphones and other devices, brought us to the new technology breakthrough. I mean, it was not new, but it started, started to being available for proper price for giants, because of this huge data centers, because of these mobile phones which collect, collect all kind of data about us, about the pattern of our behavior, about everything. So using this data and formulas which were existing, exist starting from middle of age, 1956 I guess the monetization of this technology was realized. That's a story. Yeah, okay, and how, when you look at this
industry, how does it inspire you? And where do you draw your own inspiration from? For example, using AI in healthcare for diagnosis, for creating new drugs, new medicine or new medicine, which can just cure many, many people easily. And you know, this period of creating new medicine now can be very short because of AI, for example, the level of pro I mean, right? Diagnostics techniques can just be, I mean, easily, easily, just doubled because of this technology and be available for even poor, poor countries. What else AI just now is everywhere. I mean, all the, all the not creative activities can be covered by this algorithms, and we can use our brain for creating something new. So all these, I mean, I. Repeating actions can be just skipped off. Okay, so, so the the way you describe it, well, you are in crowd. You might be biased towards a positive emotion with
respect to technology. Do you see concern around you for this technology, that it's taking away jobs, that it's deciding for you, it's not a human anymore. So is there? Do you is it positive or, I mean, you describe it from a positive perspective, what it can do? Okay, creates medicine, which is good. But do you experience sentiments that, hey, it's actually scary.
You know, when people are scary when something is uh unknown. So it's always about that. So I do believe that any kind of technologies can be either positive or negative. It depends
way of using this technology, even knife. You know, you can use this knife or cooking, and it's positive, I mean, for cutting something, for making some dish and the but at the same time, you can take this knife and kill somebody. So it's not about the technology, it's about how you use this technology, and we you should somehow control it also, you know, in EU and in us, they have their own regulation, ggpr and others. So I guess governments will come with some special regulation about data protection other things for for just putting AI in some framework and making it more humanistic. And this Congress is good, good place for discussing all kind of these issues. That's why we put this within ethics. It's all
about that. And it could be, it can be connected with any kind of new innovations, great, okay, biotech in auto, automated vehicles. This ethical issues are everywhere, yeah. Now this conference, this is like 24/7 for you in the period leading up to the conference, or do you still have time to do something else? I have another position now. It's Country Manager of ozone is
marketplace, but I just spent more time for WCIT because of because, because it's connected with the image of our country, and we should deliver the best WCIT event and the regional, regional event in tech industry. And I have commitments in front of witsa and we at and me and my team, they all do their best to organize one of the best conferences of 2024 Okay, let me then ask you one final question before we say goodbye. How do you want the world to remember this conference? WWT 2024 what was the takeaway? Takeaways that Armenia is a new, new point in the map, on the map of tech industry in the world, and we should consider why we haven't yet open branches here, and understand that Armenia the best place for best place, one of the best place of making fake business and make decision to come and to organize their R and DS branches and in this country because of few reasons, tax, tax regulation, special for it, industry, low regulation, I mean, connected with data so you can do Any kind of R and DS with low restrictions, and also great place for for life. Okay, then I'm going to sneak in one final question for you, personally, what do you hope it will bring to you personally? For me, oh, very, very tough question, to be honest, the toughest one, it's maybe connections with people like you, personal growth and you know, opportunity to to show your own country. And I'm
very proud when Armenia. Uh, can be shown in the beta light. And we always say this is a nation of asymmetry, asymmetry. It means so well, special one, sorry. We can solve problems which cannot solve others. And we are doing, we are going to show it on that conference and welcome all our guests together. We'll drink and we'll I'm looking forward to visiting
Armenia and to get to know your country, to get to know you. Uh, thank you so much for sharing your insights in Yeah, why people should look at Armenia as a country in the IT domain. So again, Hayk, thank you so much for sharing your story here. Thank you. Thank you for inviting we're looking forward to seeing you here in Armenia, and have a good day, good conference. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the brand called you videocast and podcast a platform that brings you knowledge, experience and wisdom of hundreds of successful individuals from around the world. Do visit our website, www.tbcy.in, to watch and listen to the stories of many more individuals. You can also follow
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2024-09-15