RISE Conference in Hong Kong brought together a large number of tech influencers and startups from around the world. We got a chance to talk with Jane Zavalishina – CEO of Yandex Data Factory – and get to know about the global operations of one of the most advanced and globally oriented devisions of Yandex.
What is Yandex Data Factory doing?
Yandex has been working on the big data processing algorithms for decades now. Being one of the largest search engines in the world, Yandex has got tons of data to process and has been actively taking the advantage out of it since its founding in 1997. The goal of Yandex Data Factory is to make a unique set of Yandex’s technologies, as well as the company’s extensive expertise in applied machine learning, available to businesses generating large volumes of data. Our solutions serve companies in the process industries, including metals, oil & gas, chemicals, and others.
When was Yandex Data Factory founded and why?
Founded in 2014, Yandex Data Factory is headquartered in Amsterdam and operates worldwide. The engineering team is mostly based in Russia, whereas the sales and business development team is based in the headquarters in Amsterdam. Since the beginning, Yandex Data Factory has been the startup on its own inside of Yandex. The executive board knew that there’s a large opportunity there – however the field was completely new and there were no proven ways of building and scaling such businesses. Neither were the potential customers on the market aware of the technologies mentioned and the opportunities for their businesses.
So what are the technologies behind exactly?
Yandex Data Factory builds upon a unique blend of proprietary machine-learning technologies and the data science expertise of our parent company, Yandex. Right at the beginning the team had used the technological stack accumulated over the years of operations of Yandex, and now over the 3 years of operations and getting the first large customers – we have already developed our own unique expertise and are quickly growing the technological expertise in the particular processing industries.
Tailored to work with the manufacturer’s existing and often imperfect data, our solutions deliver directly increase the productivity, reduce costs and waste, improve energy efficiency. The models are AI-enhanced in order to make the accurate predictions, real-time recommendations, and automated decisions for the most complex industrial processes.
The best thing is that the solutions are quite easy to implement. We are making them as universal as possible, aiming to solve the concrete challenges at a minimum implementation cost for our clients.
What are the most potential markets for Yandex Data Factory now?
We started with the markets we’d known best – Russian and Western European. Now we have a good list of customer companies in those countries, among them Intel, AstraZeneca, CERN, Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works, Gazprom Neft, and Schlumberger.
So now we are looking at the global markets and trying to experiment a lot. South America is a great region for us, the companies over there have got very developed infrastructures already and are willing to invest into the disrupting technologies like ours. Talking about Asian markets, it could be that the region still needs to mature a bit, since the processing industries over there have been a bit stuck with marginal improvements and often lack the long-term vision and infrastructure – therefore it’s harder to persuade them to invest into the new and unexplored previously for them technologies.
Thank you Jane for the great interview and we will be following closely the developments of Yandex Data Factory conquering the global industrial markets!
