Russia’s largest bank, the state-owned Sberbank might have 110 million consumers, 2 million merchants and 80 million mobile banking users but its ambitions are to become “more than a bank” and target many industries and markets that are not financial ones by nature.
This so-called Alibaba or Tencent model, named after the rapid expansion of the two China-based internet companies, depends on an effective corporate venturing strategy and so Sberbank has turned to Victor Orlovski, managing partner at MoneyTime Ventures, the general partner that manges its venture funds.
It is a smart choice as Orlovski was chief technology officer and chief digital officer at Sberbank for eight years and has a “unique knowledge of Sberbank technology landscape, business models and strategic plans”, he said, adding: “I was in charge of the most significant technology driven transformation of the financial institution in 21st century.
“Sberbank passed through revolution in banking from where it was back in 2007 – an old fashioned inefficient bank with no single data technology, mobile or online banking facility to one of the most innovative financial and technology groups in the world.
“Sberbank technology is a cutting-edge platform competing with the most innovative companies far beyond financial services market, including digital advertising, mobile checkouts, SME cloud platform, and telco marketplace. Today, Sberbank employs more than 11,000 highly-qualified technology experts, data analysts, scientists, competing for talents with Google, Facebook, Mail.ru and other tech giants.
“Having this experience and background, it was quite obvious for me to be passionate about further development of Sberbank tech and innovative business solutions and the best outcome of my efforts was to build and manage the fund investing in the most promising startups.”
He is also, as Lev Khasis, deputy CEO at Sberbank, for his nomination to the GCV Rising Stars 2017 awards said: “A great guy.”
MoneyTime manages $100m in SBT Fund I and SBT Fund II in which Sberbank is an anchor investor in the first and one of many investors in the second fund, which started raising up to $250m in November.
Orlovski, who completed his MBA from Warwick University before joining US-listed technology company IBM for a year then Sberbank in 2008, said: “The main goal of the fund is to invest in ventures that may leverage massive Sberbank infrastructure, outstanding brand and customer loyalty in more than 20 geographies.
“The fund is not a fintech fund by nature but is an investor in promising technology and business models that may be synergistic for Sberbank.
“There are 14 ventures Sberbank has invested so far in [through the SBT funds], and many of them started commercial relationship with Sberbank in the form of contractual arrangement, profit sharing and joint ventures.”
These deals included US-based ride-hailing platform Uber, US-based alternate mortgage business LendingHome, UK and Israel-based social trading platform EToro, cybersecurity and firewall management provider Tufin and US-based data platform developer GridGain, which raised $15m in series B funding in February last year with Orlovski joining its board. Earlier, Orlovski had joined the board of portfolio company NetGuardians after its $5.2m B round included SBT in October 2014.
To improve access to local dealflow, in June Sberbank partnered the Internet Initiatives Development Fund, a Russian government fund for online startups, to launch a fintech accelerator. The fund is selecting the startups for the accelerator and Sberbank will provide these ventures with expertise and funding for pilot projects from Sberbank itself and its SBT funds.
Orlovski, who is a “happy father of six kids,” angel investor and poet in both English and Russian, started his career in ABN Amro serving in different managerial positions in Uzbekistan, Russia and the Netherlands before joining Russia-based Alfa Bank as chief transformation officer in 2001.