Viktor Prokopenya


Viktor Prokopenya is a technology entrepreneur and venture investor born in Belarus, now residing in London, UK. He created Viaden Media, a software development company, and after its sale he founded the investment company VP Capital. Prokopenya is the architect of regulations of the Belarusian Decree on Development of Digital Economy. For this work, Viktor Prokopenya has been awarded in the Parliament of Great Britain. Viktor Prokopenya became the top taxpayer of Belarus as physical person for the years 2016 and 2017, consecutively. Оver the past 10 years, Prokopenya has been the country's largest taxpayer at least five times.

Education

Viktor Prokopenya was born in Minsk, in the former Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1983. He was born into a family of scientists: his father received a doctorate in Physical and Mathematical Sciences, worked at the Belarusian State University and later at the Belarusian National Technical University, while his mother was a mathematician. He studied in schools No. 2 and No. 130, where he graduated with distinction. He received a: bachelor's degree in law from the Belarusian State University, bachelor's degree in information technology from the European Humanities University and a degree in software development from the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics. He has also graduated from the Minsk IPM Business School, before continuing his higher education abroad at Full Sail University, executive MBA courses at Stanford Graduate School of Business and Northeastern University in Boston. In 2017 he completed his doctorate in business administration at the SBS Swiss Business School.

Entrepreneurship

Viaden Media

At the age of 16 Prokopenya took on the responsibility of caring for his family, when his father, who had started a business in the 1990s, died in a car accident. In the 2000s, Prokopenya focused on IT consulting and running Viaden Media, the IT company that he founded. In 2006, he reoriented Viaden to develop their own IT products.
In 2009 the company launched a mobile applications department. The company developed numerous top-rated applications including All-in Fitness, which sustained top ranking positions on the AppStore Healthcare & Fitness category in 40 countries for several months. Viaden achieved in excess of 200 million mobile application installations. By 2011 the company was the largest mobile phone software developer in the post-Soviet region. Prokopenya ran the company until 2011 when he sold it, for €95 million, to Teddy Sagi, an Israeli entrepreneur and founder of Playtech software company. This was the first sizable acquisition in the Belarusian history of IT industry. Later Viaden Media was divided into two companies: Sport.com and the Skywind Group.

VP Capital

In 2012, Prokopenya founded his investment company, VP Capital, which has a focus on the technology sector. Later this year he started the fintech company exp, which develops solutions for banks and brokers in order to construct algorithms for high frequency market making. The company is located in the Belarus High Technologies Park, and was ranked the best employer of the year in 2014. The mobile applications department of exp was acquired by the British company IG Holdings for an undisclosed sum.
Prokopenya also established VP Capital's Real Estate company in 2012 and acquired a number of key commercial real estate assets in the center of Minsk—by 2017, the company became the largest private owner of real estate of its kind in Minsk.
In December 2016, together with the Larnabel Ventures Fund, owned by Gutseriev family, Prokopenya announced his intention to invest over $100 million in artificial intelligence startup businesses. In 2017-2019 the partners announced six investment agreements on a parity basis, in which they have invested equally:
In the summer of 2017 it was announced that VP Capital planned to buy Paritetbank and that the $50 million deal had been approved by the authorities. The regulator welcomed the Belarusian investor coming in to the banking sector, taking into account Viktor Prokopenya's good reputation and experience in the IT sector.
In an interview to TUT.by, Viktor Prokopenya claimed that bank acquisition is direct and important development of his experience in IT and fintech. 3 August 2017, Prokopenya withdrew the application for the purchase of a subsidiary of Sberbank and refused to purchase Paritetbank. Later, 16 August 2017, presidential edict approving the sale of Paritetbank became was abolished. However his company claimed that their focus is fintech of Capital.com which develops mobile applications in sphere of finances.
VP Capital also applied to acquire Sberbank's banking business in Ukraine, but later withdrew the deal in order to focus on other projects.

Top taxpayer of Belarus

Viktor Prokopenya became the top taxpayer of Belarus as physical person for the years 2016 and 2017, consecutively. According to TUT.BY, over the past 10 years, Prokopenya has been the country's largest taxpayer at least five times.

Legal initiatives

Decree on the Development of a Digital Economy

In March 2017 Viktor Prokopenya proposed development of legislation for the use of autonomous cars, cryptocurrency and the development of initiatives designed to stimulate the IT industry in Belarus. On 22 December 2017, President Alexander Lukashenko signed into law the Decree on the Development of a Digital Economy.
Viktor Prokopenya initiated legislation changes that were aimed to: introduce special tax remunerations until 2049 for IT sector, remove bureaucracy and regulate distributed ledger technologies. The regulation was called "Decree 8" was approved and went into force on 28 March 2018. Decree 8 initiative was criticized by Belarussian economist Serge Chaly, who pinpointed a number of bubbles in distributed ledger technology space.
He also argued, that it doesn't help the broader economy when IT industry receives special tax regime. As a result of decree 8 regulations IT sector grew 40% in 2018 contributing to 25% of Belarussian GDP growth in 2018. However, Denis Filazafovich on Kastrychnicki economichny forum said that he doesn't see how this growth can continue at this rate.
Prokopenya argued, that providing improved fiscal incentives will make IT grow, not at the expense of Belarussian economy, but due to increasing Belarussian IT sector share in international markets. Arguing that Belarus will get more export proceeds and that the whole economy will be grow due to a multiplier effect. Viktor Martinovich argued that regulating IT under different rules compared to the rest of economy is not a sustainable practice, and that it is necessary to make structural changes in both the economy and government to develop Belarus as a whole.
Viktor Prokopenya invited S.Chaly to publicly discuss the new legislation concerning the regulation of the IT industry and cryptocurrencies. Sergei Chaly initially agreed but later changed his mind.

Ministry of Digital Economy

In 2017, Prokopenya proposed the creation of the Ministry of Digital Economy, which will be responsible for the digitalization of the country. According to him, the Administration of the High Tech Park is now resolving these state issues. In April 2019, at a meeting between the president and the IT business, Lukashenko approved this initiative.

Public initiatives

State debt of Belarus

On November 5, 2018, at the International Economic Forum Prokopenya supported the idea of a moratorium relating to the death penalty in Belarus. He argued that this is good for society and that this would reduce the cost of interest payouts on the state debt of Belarus. Prokopenya said that Belarus pays around 5% a year interest on debt obligations and that this is high for Belarus, which has debt less than 30% of its GDP. Critics argued that his calculations are inaccurate and that there is no connection between abolishing the death penalty in Belarus and reducing the country's debt burden. Some critics agreed that a moratorium on the death penalty will improve relations between Belarus and the European Union, and that this could affect the rating of the Belarusian Eurobonds and possibly rendering new debt cheaper.

Specialist training for IT Belarus

Viktor Prokopenya speaks a lot in public about the small number of specialists for the new IT-Belarus economy and the low level of education of university graduates: "One of the latest initiatives of our community is to send $ 15 million to IT education from the High Tech Park fund. Every year we can teach thousands of students." In October 2019, President Lukashenko supported Prokopenya's proposal to create an experimental IT university. Lukashenko also supported Prokopeny's idea about interest-free loans for education in the knowledge economy.
The entrepreneur talks a lot about digitalization of schools. In December 2018 VP Capital and personally Viktor Prokopenyа presented 600 tablets with textbooks in Russian and Belarusian to students of Belarusian schools. In April 2019, Prokopenya proposed to Lukashenko ideas for improving the school system, including: electronic document management, virtual video tutorials, a personalized teaching method, and in-depth career guidance. Prokopenya suggested making more English lessons in schools, changing the curriculum and teacher payment system. Lukashenko supported these initiatives. Some of them will be adopted in the near future, some will be tested first in an experimental school.

Detention and media relations

In the spring of 2015, Viktor Prokopenya was detained by Belarusian state authorities and was suspected in unregistered business activity, earning profits to the sum of $650,000. Deutsche Welle, and Belarusian IT experts alleged that the detainment of Viktor Prokopenya could potentially cause hundreds of million of dollars in damages to Belarus. The IT business community came to the defense of Prokopenya. Viktor Prokopenya was released on bail. In February 2016, all allegations against him were dropped after authorities failed to uncover any violations.
The story of the investigation gained widespread media coverage in Belarus. At the end of 2017, Prokopenya's legal advisors approached various Belarusian media channels, including BelaPAN, BelTA, European Radio for Belarus, Narodnaja Volya, Nasha Niva, Onliner.by, Tut.By, requesting the removal or correction of old news stories which contained incorrect information. In their opinion, the legal facts in the materials were in fact incorrect. Many outlets agreed that the information was incorrect and corrected the publications or deleted them, and this provoked the discussions journalism ethics.
Prokopenya has repeatedly spoken out publicly in defense of the media and against state pressure on sites. In January 2018, he opposed the blocking of Charter 97 and Belarusian Partisan sites. Prokopenya said that this situation would complicate international relations and damage the image of Belarus. In August 2018, the businessman wrote in the media that the power structures of Belarus should release the detained journalists and editors of TUT.BY, BelaPAN and other Belarusian media. He said that this is how the country takes a huge step back.

Honours and awards

The Belarusian media has repeatedly included Prokopenya in the rankings of notable Belarusian entrepreneurs. In the list of the 200 most successful and influential businessmen of Belarus, published by the Internet newspaper Ezednevnik, Prokopenya was awarded the 184th place in 2011, the 47th in 2013, the 45th in 2016, the 23rd in 2017, the 12th in 2018, and the 9th in 2019. In the list of 25 most influential businessmen of Belarus from 1992 till 2017, also published by Ezhednevnik, he received 13th place. Viktor Prokopenya has been named Belarus's "Entrepreneur of the Year" three times.
In 2019, in parliament of Great Britain, Prokopenya has been awarded for his outstanding contribution to the development of the legislation in the IT area in Belarus and for creation of one of the most beneficial legal frameworks for IT businesses in post-Soviet countries.
In April 2020, Prokopenya has 6,5 million followers on Instagram making him the most followed instagrammer in Belarus,

Personal life

Prokopenya is married and has three sons: Mikhail, Mark, and Artur. He lives and works in London. His hobbies include photography, hockey, snowboarding, diving, cycling and reading.

Publications

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