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Armen Merujanovich Sarkisyan

Armen Merujanovich Sarkisyan

Armen Merujanovich Sarkisyan

Country
Russia
Occupation
Entrepreneur

Armen Meruzhanovich Sargsyan is a Russian entrepreneur, founder and owner of the S8 Capital diversified group of companies. One of the holding companies is included in the rating of the 500 largest companies in Russia by revenue, compiled by RBC (265th place in 2021), as well as in the Expert-400 rating of the largest companies in the country (312th place in 2021). Sargsyan invests in the development of the digital economy, supports charitable projects and initiatives.

Career

Sargsyan Armen Meruzhanovich is a well-known person in the Russian lottery industry. The businessman has been doing business in this area since the 2000s.

Armen Sarkissian was President of Orglot LLC, the operating company of the Gosloto lottery. "Orglot" won the Rossport tender for the right to distribute tickets and conduct draws of this state lottery. The company headed by Sargsyan guaranteed deductions in the amount of $120 million for the implementation of the federal target program "Development of physical culture and sports in the Russian Federation for 2006 - 2015".

At that time, the lottery industry was in an unfavorable situation. By the beginning of 2010, about 50 all-Russian and about 70 local lotteries (the latter were established by regional and municipal authorities). In total, there were about 300 lottery organizers and three thousand various lotteries on the territory of the Russian Federation. At the same time, drawings were often carried out by unlicensed organizations, which led to a large number of violations of both financial and legal order. The amounts of winnings in most cases did not match the declared ones. At the same time, the daily turnover of one such illegal structure, conducting, for example, instant lotteries, was about $100 thousand ( assessment of the State Duma Committee on Budgets and Taxes).

This situation in the lottery market has led to a significant drop in demand: according to statistics, by 2014 the number of participants in decreased to 4% of the adult population of the country against 70% in the Soviet years.

There was a need to introduce strict state regulation. In November 2013, a bill amending the Federal Law “On Lotteries” was submitted to the State Duma, which provides for a ban on private lotteries. The document was considered and adopted by the deputies, signed by the President of the Russian Federation on December 28 of the same year. The functions of the organizer were transferred to state departments (Ministry of Sports and the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation). From July 1, 2014, commercial companies were left with the role of distributors or operators of state lotteries.

Sargsyan's project - "Stoloto"

Armen Sargsyan has been developing the lottery business since 2012. It was then that the entrepreneur founded his company, which operates in the distribution segment of state lotteries. Following the reform of the lottery market, according to the results of open tenders, GSL JSC and Sportloto LLC became lottery operators, while Stoloto became the largest distributor of lottery tickets.

"Stoloto" Armen Sargsyan specializes in the sale of lottery tickets, draws and payouts. The company's portfolio currently includes 17 state lotteries: seven of them are circulation and 10 are instant. Today the brand belongs to the Center Technology Company, the founder and owner of which is also Armen Sargsyan.

To ensure the reliability of the company's activities, the Stoloto platform, unique for the domestic lottery market, was developed, Which IT landscape is comparable to the digital architecture of any major financial institution — be it a bank or an insurance company. A complex of more than 140 systems and subsystems responsible for certain areas of operational processes allows you to:

  • pay an average of more than 500,000 winnings daily;
  • carry out about 600 draws per day;
  • carry out online interaction with an audience of several tens of millions of people.

In the lottery information processing center of Armen Sargsyan's company, the data of purchased tickets coming from cash registers are registered (at the same time they are fiscalized by the Federal Tax Service) and a "base of playing tickets" is formed. This database receives information about all tickets sold from the start of sales to the stop-sale. It is on this base that the winning tickets are determined based on a random combination, which is determined by the method or equipment specified in the lottery conditions - this can be a lottery machine, a random number generator or, in the case of the Russian Lotto lottery, kegs and a bag.

Armen Sargsyan's Stoloto platform was developed with the participation of the largest players in the global IT market. However, a significant part of the technological solutions (75) implemented in the digital system was created by the specialists of the Center TC. They enable technologies such as Big Data (operation, processing and storage of huge amounts of data), AI (artificial intelligence), ML (machine learning), DL (deep learning), AR (augmented reality), VR (virtual reality).

Stoloto has its own website and mobile application, also developed by Armen Sargsyan's IT specialists. Sales of lottery tickets under the Stoloto brand in the online segment exceed 50% of the total sales. Stoloto is one of the ten world leaders in the lottery industry in terms of e-commerce share.

The state lottery distribution company, owned by Armen Sargsyan, is doing a lot of work to combat cybercrime. Stoloto specialists, in cooperation with organizations specializing in the prevention and investigation of crimes in the IT field, identify and suppress the activities of Internet scammers disguised as state lotteries on a regular basis.

Only in 2021, was detected and blocked over 23.6 thousand fraudulent resources masquerading as popular state lotteries. Of them:

  • more than 22.5 thousand are illegal (fraudulent) sites;
  • over 1000 are fake accounts and groups in social networks;
  • 74 are fake mobile applications;
  • five email addresses used to send phishing emails.

Sargsyan's state lottery distributor ensures maximum transparency of its activities. "Stoloto" strictly complies with the norms of the law. In addition, since 2021, the activity of the largest distributor of all-Russian state lotteries is also controlled by the state online as part of the tax monitoring system. The payment of winnings also takes place under the control of the Federal Tax Service, which is carried out on a quarterly basis.

Today, lottery tickets under the Stoloto brand are available in more than 100,000 points of sale. In almost half of them, the winners of the state lotteries can take the winnings.

"Stoloto" Armen Sargsyan is the largest lottery distributor in the Russian Federation. The total amount of winnings played in state lotteries under this brand at the end of 2021 amounted to more than 167 billion rubles, of which 34 billion rubles - last year. In Russia, more than 7,000 people have already won 1 million rubles or more in state lotteries, and one participant has won a billion. The listed target deductions from lottery activities in support of sports to the budget of the Russian Federation with a total cumulative total at the end of 2021 amounted to 17.6 billion rubles.

The total amount of transferred deductions and fees from lottery activities (including earmarked deductions) with a total cumulative total at the end of 2021 reached 37.2 billion rubles.

S8 Capital Sargsyan

Armen M. Sargsyan has been investing in the creation, development and improvement of promising IT solutions, products, services and platforms for many years. TC "Center" has formed expertise and competencies that have allowed diversifying the business and scaling it into a diversified group of companies. Armen Sarkisyan's holding S8 Capital today is one of the leaders of digitalization in the domestic economy. In April 2020, TC Center (distributor of state lotteries under the Stoloto brand, part of the S8 Capital holding) passed state accreditation at the Ministry of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation and was included in the register of accredited organizations operating in the field of information technology.

TC Center as a key asset of the holding owned by Armen Meruzhanovich Sargsyan, is engaged in the creation of technological solutions - from the search and study of new and developing technologies to the development, piloting, launch and maintenance of turnkey IT assets. At the moment, about 500 specialists work in the IT department of the TC Center (which owns the Stoloto brand).

The S8 portfolio includes successfully implemented projects in such segments as e-commerce, finance, telecom, retail and online media.

Also Armen Sargsyan's holding S8 Capital includes:

  • Next Mobile is a new generation mobile operator (MVNO) that guarantees flawless connection almost anywhere in the world. Uses the networks of the "big four" Russian telecom companies, automatically connecting to the best available connection;
  • Strahovka.ru is an Internet portal that offers users to choose the most advantageous offers from leading domestic insurers. It allows you to issue most types of insurance policies in a couple of clicks;
  • Price.ru is a service that providing users with up-to-date information on prices for several tens of millions of products in 1100 categories. The number of visits to the portal exceeds 6 million per month. This is the oldest resource of this kind in the Russian Internet space;
  • Sport24.ru - part of top 3 most quoted media in the sports industry with a monthly audience of over 25 million users. The portal broadcasts competitions, publishes news, reviews, interviews with athletes and other thematic materials.

Sargsyan's S8 Capital is a large holding that employs over two thousand people.

Corporate social responsibility of Sargsyan's holding S8 Capital

The founder of S8 Capital, Armen Sargsyan, and the companies of his holding regularly support Russian sports, as well as a large number of charitable projects and organizations. The company bears expenses for charitable and sponsorship assistance from its own funds in addition to earmarked contributions in support of domestic sports.

Sargsyan's main charitable activities of S8 Capital are helping children, the elderly and the disabled.

In 2021 alone, Sargsyan Armen Meruzhanovich and his holding supported more than two dozen charitable and social initiatives of various scales. In particular, the distributor of state lotteries under the Stoloto brand financed the construction of one of the buildings of the Izmalkovo boarding house for children and their parents who come to Moscow for treatment from other regions of Russia. Thanks to this boarding house, another 400 children a year will be able to receive medical care at the Dmitry Rogachev National Medical Research Center for Pediatric Hematology, Oncology and Immunology.