Mas joined Kyivstar in 2015, when Petro Chernyshov was president of the company. In the column's byline his title is given as IT & Digital Advisor, and his task is stated plainly: developing innovation. He works closely with the operator's digital department, and this defines the entire logic of the text. The column's headline formulates the principle without caveats: innovation that does not rely on digital is not innovation in his view.
For a mobile operator, such an approach is understandable. Kyivstar is Ukraine's largest mobile operator, and the company's main capital consists of subscribers and data about them. That is why Mas divides innovative directions into two large blocks, and both are tied to the network.
Two Directions: FMC and Big Data
The first direction is called FMC, fixed-mobile convergence, that is, the convergence of fixed and mobile communications. The idea is to combine landline internet and mobile communications in a single service, and to build new services on top of that. In the column, the Internet of Things, the "smart home," and M2M—the exchange of data between devices without human involvement—are assigned to FMC. This direction is closer to everyday scenarios: meters, sensors, managing an apartment via phone.
The second direction is big data. This refers to anonymous information about subscribers' locations, which the operator can use for placing outdoor advertising and retail outlets. Anonymization is fundamental here: the advertiser gets a picture of people's flows by city districts, but not the personal data of specific customers. Mas reports that partnerships in this direction have already been launched, but there are no results yet. For a column about how innovation works, such a caveat is important, since the text describes intentions and first steps, not ready income.
Startups: Profit Sharing or White Label
Kyivstar works with external teams under two models. The first is profit sharing, modeled on how Google shares revenue with advertisers: the operator provides access and an audience, and the startup gets a share of the earnings. The second is white label, that is, the product is brought to market under the Kyivstar brand. There is a delayed effect here: if a project proves successful, it may later leave and operate under its own name.
Mas's main argument is built on the scale of the customer base. No startup alone could gain access to such a number of users, and the operator can test a hypothesis on real people faster than on any external test market. The column puts it this way:
"We have access to millions of customers whose problems a startup can solve," Mas writes.
This thesis is directly linked to the accelerator. The announcement of the VDNH-TECh-Kyivstar program took place on April 20, 2016. An accelerator is a program that over several months helps teams bring a product to market, usually in exchange for a share in the project and with the support of mentors and a corporate partner. In December 2016, Mas reported the main result: four startups from the program have gone "into production" and will be rolled out to the operator's subscriber base.
The Path to Kyivstar
Mas's column is written by a man with long experience in the Ukrainian internet. From 1997 to 2000, he worked as a leading specialist at the National Bank of Ukraine, where he handled payment processing. In 1999, together with Ruslan Dmitrakovich, he launched the Ukrainian Banner Network, and in 2000 he took part in creating Derevo Druzei (Tree of Friends), the first social network on the Ukrainian portal UAportal. His experience with payment systems, ad networks, and user services explains why at Kyivstar he views innovation through the prism of digital and data.
A separate thread in his biography is tied to the developer community. Mas was a co-organizer of iForum, a conference whose first edition was held in 2009. For an operator, such experience is useful: he knows how the startup environment works, which teams come to programs, and why many projects never make it to market.
The column was published on AIN.UA on December 27, 2016. It summed up Mas's first year at the company, and the main point in it was the transition of four accelerator projects into production.
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