VK Group opens an office in Belarus
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VK plans to open a new office in Minsk in the coming months. The Ambassador of Belarus to the Russian Federation has already discussed with the leadership of the group the priority directions of its development in the country. VK can attract local developers to create new products, for example, in the field of game development and other promising areas. Also, experts say, the possibilities of content services will increase, which will attract new advertisers.
Kommersant’s sources said that the VK holding plans to open an office in Belarus by the end of the year. The country’s embassy told Kommersant that at the end of June, Ambassador Dmitry Krutoy visited the VK office in Moscow and met with Maxim Tadevosyan, vice president for the development of new business areas of the company. The general state of the IT market in the Russian Federation and Belarus, the priority areas for the development of VK, as well as the holding’s plans for development in the country were discussed. In VK, “Kommersant” said that they “are considering the possibility of opening an office in the coming months.”
VK has been strengthening its presence in the near abroad for a long time. In 2012, VKontakte opened a branch in Ukraine, but five years later, after blocking the resource by order of local authorities, it was closed. In 2020, the group opened a representative office in Kazakhstan, within which a news feed was launched for residents of the country. Now VK has two offices in Moscow, four in St. Petersburg, one each in Nizhny Novgorod, Sochi, Kazan, Limassol and Kazakhstan. In August, VK announced the termination of VK Company Limited’s activities in the British Virgin Islands and the intention to register it in the Kaliningrad region. (see Kommersant dated August 11).
In terms of content services, VK has already begun to strengthen its presence in Belarus: in April, VK Music launched local sections in Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan. Traffic on VKontakte from Belarus in June 2023, according to SimilarWeb, was 3.17% of the global, on Odnoklassniki – 4.17%, on Mail.ru – 3.29%. The vast majority of traffic – 75-83% depending on the service – came from Russia. VKontakte does not publish audience data in Belarus. For Odnoklassniki, in 2022, it averaged 2.3 million people per month.
According to Karen Kazaryan, Director General of the Internet Research Institute, VK is primarily interested in the development of development in the region: “Now the holding is one of the three leaders in the social network segment in Belarus and follows the legislation in the field of personal data and content.” The country’s legislation here is similar to Russian practice, says lawyer, Moscow Digital School expert Roman Moskovskikh. To expand its activities on the territory of Belarus, VK can register a representative office or create a subsidiary legal entity, says Mr. Moskovskikh.
The procedure for registering a legal entity in Belarus is similar to that used in Russia, says Kirill Lyakhmanov, chief legal adviser of the intellectual property practice at EBR law firm: “The only noticeable difference is the requirement of the Belarusian legislator to first agree on the name in Belarusian and Russian in full and abbreviated form before filing documents”.
VK follows the path of Yandex and creates representative offices in the CIS countries, says Sergey Polovnikov, head of the Content Review information and analytical agency: “Now foreign IT companies are leaving Belarus, freeing up a human resource of specialists whom VK plans to take on its staff.”
Sergey Babich, director of the international music industry forum Colisium, noted that there are strong game developers in the region: “Probably, the company can attract them to its game projects.” In addition, he adds, in terms of the development of content services, music and video, the Belarusian market is promising for VK, since the company can attract new advertisers.
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