ProductStar

ProductStar is a Russian online university with expertise in product management, analytics and programming. The company offers training courses in digital professions from the main practitioners of the industry. Training on the ProductStar educational platform is based on applied cases of Russian and international companies.

The company provides educational and consulting services for business: conducting corporate educational programs, training specialists in technical specialties, developing an HR brand and helping to hire employees. The educational platform has individual courses in the areas of "Product," "Analytics," "Marketing," "Programming," as well as more than 50 (data for August 2021) specialized programs for corporate clients.

ProductStar is a co-organizer of the international community ProductCamp, which since 2011 has brought together specialists in the field of product management in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Performance indicators

2021: Revenue growth by 278% to RUB 142 mln

On February 22, 2022, ProductStar Corporate Online University announced that it had tripled its revenue for 2021 and showed 4x growth in the corporate education segment.

In 2021, ProductStar's revenue amounted to 142 million rubles, which corresponds to an increase of 278% compared to the results of 2020 (then revenue amounted to 51 million rubles). The performance of the plan (run rate) amounted to more than 210 million rubles.

The company is profitable and growing without attracting investment. In 2022, we will continue to actively develop the areas of management and analytics, as the demand for the transition to the IT profession remains consistently high. We will also support the growth of the corporate direction. Since the educational market and HRTech are still far from saturated both in Russia and in the world as a whole, we expect business growth by two to three times in 2022 and revenues of about 350 million rubles, - commented Mikhail Karpov, CEO and Co-Founder ProductStar.

In 2021, peak demand for ProductStar's educational programs came in September. This is due to both the intensification of business requests after the vacation period and the desire of B2C clients to coincide with the development of a new profession by the beginning of the school year. Among private users in 2021, more than 3,000 students were trained, both in the format of short courses and in the format of an annual course with a guarantee of employment. The leaders in activity among the regions are Moscow and St. Petersburg (they provide about 60% of students). Also, requests from regions are often received, as more and more companies are switching to a distributed work format, and the labor market is reformatting in the regions.

The B2B segment in 2021 showed a peak growth. It usually reacts to trends more slowly, and if in 2020 the main demand for training fell on the mass market, now everything has become the opposite. The need to train specialists was manifested not only by traditional IT companies, but also by financial organizations, retailers and large industrial enterprises. As a result, in 2021, the corporate direction of ProductStar showed an increase of 4 times a year-to-year.

In 2021, employees of more than 200 companies joined the training at ProductStar. Training requests were related to the development of digital transformation projects for companies, the introduction of product and analytical approaches. In addition, there was a demand for targeted executive development and digital literacy skills development for line employees.

For corporate clients, business result is primarily important, so we regularly measure the results of training with them. The assessment of the results is carried out at three stages: this is a measurement of the level of knowledge in the format of testing before and after training, an assessment of the implementation of the skills gained on the applied projects of company employees and receiving a personal assessment from the employee and his manager. This allows you to make the results of educational programs transparent, - commented Mikhail Karpov.

The growth of the ProductStar business was also supported by the growth of the team: it has become 1.5 times larger: now it is 80 professionals, assisted by more than 200 industry experts who are speakers of courses. In 2021, more than 100 experts from various fields joined the ProductStar team of experts: top management, digital marketing, product management, information security, data science. The training methodology is also being improved: now it has more emphasis on blended formats, a request for soft skills training and interactive formats is developing.

In 2021, the development of new directions and products continued. Among them, for example, the SkillsetIQ intelligent system, which includes an assessment of skills, building competence maps and personalizing student educational routes. It is based on the experience of market experts and technological algorithms. Custom programs are also developing: for example, industry specializations have appeared inside the courses. They help gain more of the right experience and speed up employment for B2C customers.

In addition, the reliability and security of the ProductStar educational platform continues to improve, for which the technology stack was improved and modified in 2021. The company has the opportunity to respond to individual wishes of corporate clients in the field of information security and embed training programs inside their "security loop": this is implemented using specialized solutions.

Industry conferences remain a promising area for ProductStar. First of all, this is ProductCamp with a 10-year history and the DevsCamp technology community, which is developing in conjunction with Google Russia. The communities have enriched themselves not only with online and offline formats, but also with their own podcasts and media shows. The foreign direction and community is also growing: in 2021, ProductStar held the first European conference ProductCamp Europe, uniting the largest technological hubs such as London, Berlin and Amsterdam. In 2022, international expansion will continue.

History

2023: RBC bought 87% of productStar

In mid-May 2023, it became known about the sale of ProductStar to the RBC medical holding. Its participants did not disclose the financial and other parameters of the transaction.

As Kommersant"" writes with reference to the data of the Unified State Register of Legal Entities (USRUL), RBC acquired an educational service from its founders Mikhail Karpov and Roman Abramov. 87% of the authorized capital of the legal entity ProductStar (Trivium LLC) was transferred directly to Rosbusinessconsulting JSC, 13% - to its property. CNews At the same time, Karpov remained the CEO of ProductStar.

It became known about the sale of ProductStar to the RBC medical holding

The representative of the holding explained to the publication that ProductStar can interact with other RBC projects. We can talk, among other things, about RBC Pro subscription products. The holding acquired the project "to strengthen the research direction and expand services within the framework of B2B partnerships," said Dmitry Solopov, founder of the Progress communication group. Investment consultant of FG Finam"" Timur Nigmatullin, based on the debt burden and revenue, estimated the company sold at 90-160 million. rubles

Earlier, the possibility of acquiring ProductStar was considered by the Ultimate Education educational holding, but considered that the project "did not show strong growth in 2022," said Nikita Podlipsky, managing director of the holding. At the same time, he noted that ProductStar is "a strong player in its niche, with great expertise in product management training and a systematic approach to working with the business segment."

The newspaper noted that ProductStar also leases its own training management system (LMS, allows companies to create their own courses). Irina Yanova, head of sales development for services on Russian Softline products, said that the popularity of such systems grew in 2022.^[1]

2018: Founding of the company

ProductStar was founded in 2018 by Mikhail Karpov (ex-CPO Skyeng, a former employee of VKontakte, Yandex) and Roman Abramov (Director of Product Platforms Tinkoff, ex-Product Director Carprice).

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