Prime Source and FatBrain AI reveal details of the merging deal
Last week the Kursiv editions wrote about the big deal on the Kazakhstani IT market now we know some details. Evgeny Chsherbinin, CEO of Prime Source, a Kazakhstani software development company and Peter B. Ritz, CEO of FatBrain AI, an American IT company, held a press briefing in Almaty (Mr. Ritz participated online). According to Mr. Ritz, once the company equities are bought from Prime Source owners, FatBrain will not change the management structure of the firm.
«When we are buying an equity from an owner we are going to help that company to grow and scale up its business,» said Peter Ritz.
In turn, Evgeny Chsherbinin confirmed that FatBrain sets a high value on the local team that has built a highly effective private IT business in Kazakhstan with no links to big financial or industrial groups. «Every member of the team is ready for long-term cooperation as we have got new opportunities for growth thanks to the deal. When we worked on different projects before, sometimes we could have faced a lack of expertise or technologies or financial resources. Now we see how all those limits disappear,» Chsherbinin noted.
«Nothing will change for our clients as we are going to meet all our obligations. Moreover, we are going to increase our technical capabilities,» he added. Direct access to the up-to-date technologies, international expertise and investments will help Prime Source to improve the current services for Kazakhstani businesses and introduce new ones. These solutions are aimed at facilitating everyday activity for both big companies and small and medium-sized businesses. According to Peter Ritz, these are, for example, services for recruiting, procurement, or for getting access to funds or analysis of risks and exchange rate volatility.
The American shareholder has no objections to Prime Source’s cooperation with the local government and the quasi-sector. «We have learned Kazakhstani legislation, the government requires a large part of any product or service to be local. At the same time, the volume of resources of our developers is the only thing that matters for the local content. The fact that a company is owned by a foreign entity isn’t taken into consideration,» said Chsherbinin.
The second direction Prime Source is going to develop is outsourcing its IT services. The company wants more orders from abroad. «We’ve already gotten some revenue in foreign currency but we are going to beef it up,» he said.
According to Kursiv Research’s rating, Prime Source is ranked fifth among Kazakhstani software development companies. This is the biggest independent player in the local market. Initially, the company was focused on creating systems for fighting against money laundering. As of today, the company’s AML solutions are installed in nine of the ten largest banks in Kazakhstan. Later, Prime Source started to help businesses improve their business processes. Prime Source products help in improving business processes through software robotics, integration of different data silos, and so on. The company’s portfolio spans more than 450 projects in finance, telecommunications, industry, and the public sector. Currently, there are more than 400 software engineers, analytics and project managers in the company.
FatBrain AI is an American company with huge experience in IT. Some of the company’s founders led R&D in the field of AI in the IBM Watson research center, some created a cloud service for network security later acquired by Cisco. FatBrain AI is going to create an AI cloud service to help 200 small- and medium-sized businesses all over the world in making business decisions.
