This story initially appeared in East-West Digital News, an international news resource covering the Russian innovation scene.
Last week RBC, a major business publication, released its ranking of Russian companies by revenue and profit with 34 economic sectors covered.
Unsurprisingly the three top companies in this ranking – Gazprom, Lukoil and Rosneft – are from the oil and gas industry. They are followed by Sberbank, the state-controlled financial giant, and Russian Railways.
Russia’s top 5 companies by revenue
Tech companies (which can be found in the “Information technologies” and “Media & Internet” categories) lag far behind these giants. Russia’s largest IT company is National Computer Corporation (NCC), which generated RUR177 bln ($2.81 bln) in revenue last year.
With some 3,8K employees, NCC is a diversified IT manufacturing and service group. Its flagship is Aquarius, a large IT manufacturers that can release “over 400K high-tech devices per year” – from computers and laptops, to data storage systems, to servers, to tlecom equipment.
Russia’s number two tech company is Lanit, a group of 38 entities employing around 11,7K people. These companies operate in IT development, installation, implementation of hardware and software complexes in addition to personnel training. Lanit generated RUR141 bln ($2.25 billion) in revenue in 2018.
Yandex comes third among Russia’s tech companies with RUR128 bln ($2.04 bln) in revenues. This is twice as much as much as its rival Mail.ru Group, number four, whose revenues reached RUR66 bln ($1.05 bln) last year.
Yandex also did better than Mail.ru in terms of net income. The former generated RUR46 bln ($730 mio) in net income in 2018, up +430% from 2017, while the latter lost more than RUR8 bln ($130 mio).
Two local subsidiaries of foreign companies are in the top 10 tech companies: Google Russia (nearly $1 bln in revenue) and SAP CIS ($560 mio).
Russia’s top 10 tech companies by revenue
Almost simultaneously, Forbes Russia published its 2018 list of the 50 largest foreign companies in Russia. The top ten includes four retailers, three car manufacturers, two tobacco companies and Pepsi.