MTS talked about the plans for the development of the ERION ecosystem

MTS Ecosystem will change its name to ERION by the end of the year. This was reported to Kommersant by the head of the MTS Ecosystem, Rovshan Aliyev.

"There are two aspects here: the first is that each company should be positioned as independent, which means that it will build its brand, its name and reputation. Secondly, we do not deny or seek to separate something from something," the top manager explained.

At the end of 2024, MTS announced a large-scale change in the corporate structure of the group: the company brought business verticals outside of telecom (IT, fintech, funtech, Adtech, kicksharing "Yuret") into separate legal entities and joined them to the MTS Ecosystem. According to Aliyev, the transformation process has been brewing "for the last couple of years."

"First, MTS created products, then they grew into subsidiaries, now they are of such a size that they need to be managed seriously and separately," explained the head of MTS Ecosystem. He noted that during the reorganization, some projects were closed: Smart Home, Auto, Nuum, B2C showcase Travel, and a number of small, non-public projects. The released investment resources were directed to the main business areas.

According to Aliyev, as a result of the transformation, "the most correct set of businesses" has been combined in the ecosystem. Thus, big business in the form of telecom provides a huge customer base, funtech provides customer loyalty, fintech provides savings and customer comfort in terms of daily life and finances. "To make it convenient for people to use all this, there is an IT business that provides unified platforms, ID and digitalization at the top level in the country," added the head of the MTS Ecosystem. Everything complements the advertising business, which acts as a good link for building partnerships and monetization.

Aliev explained that the new name of the MTS Ecosystem, ERION, is a combination of the words ERA and ION. Era is like a new period, the future, and Ion is like the movement of a charged particle. Each of the verticals will also have its own brand, with the exception of MTS Bank, which retains the continuity of MTS. The media holding will have its own new brand, and Yrent will return to an independent brand, but as part of Erion, AdTech will also change its brand. "MTS will remain behind telecom, MTS Web Services (MWS) is already technologically advanced and excellent," Aliyev added.

As each of the businesses grows, the interchange of the customer base increases the synergetic effect, MTS noted. In each of the directions, the group aims to be at least in the top 3. "Each company should be positioned as independent, which means that it will build its brand, its name and reputation," stressed the head of the MTS Ecosystem.

He noted that the ecosystem's business is growing at a double—digit rate - more than 25% every year. Just three or four years ago, the share of the ecosystem was less than 15%, in 2023 it was 30%. The target for next year is 50%, Aliev said. At the same time, revenue over the past 12 months has amounted to more than 300 billion rubles.

Speaking about the ecosystem's development plans, Aliev spoke about AI transformation, which is expected to make processes cheaper, faster, and generate content. He noted that more than 10,000 IT specialists work in the ecosystem, and 20% of the code is already written using AI, and the percentage will only grow. In many ways, this indicator was achieved through the development of AI assistants. If programmers had not used them, MTS would have had to attract about two thousand additional developers, Aliyev stressed.

"We see digitalization and digitalization in the country, which only accelerate the cloud business. And we invest substantial funds in it — about 10 billion rubles every year," said the head of the MTS Ecosystem. He noted that the launch of a large cloud platform, the MWS Cloud Platform, is scheduled for the end of October. For these purposes, a new module in the GreenBush data center with 600 racks was opened at the end of September, and in 2026 MTS plans to implement a special data center project for AI with highly loaded server racks.

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