The state of the IT industry in Belarus is one that needs to be shed light on. Several things are noteworthy as we get started:
- Belarus has outpaced, by 1.5 times, countries such as India, the US, and South Korea.
- In comparison to the rest of the economy, the IT industry in Belarus is very optimistic
- Belarusian IT services are consistently increasing over the years and stood at over $800 million in the last couple of years
- The number of software development companies in Belarus is 1000. 80 of them are R$D centers while more than 650 of them are in outsourcing
- The number of freelancers in Belarus is increasing yearly.
Trends in outsourcing in Belarus
1. Salary Increment
The rise in wages is decreasing by around 2% to 3% compared to the increase, by 12% to 27%, which has been experienced in previous years. The reasons for this are:
- The regular depreciation of thelocal currency places software engineers at an advantaged position since theirsalaries are pegged to the USD. AS the Belarusian Rubles depreciates, theirpurchasing power grows they can then afford a lavish lifestyle in comparison toother sectors’ employees.
- Following armed conflict andeconomic crisis, there had been an influx of software engineers from Russia andUkraine, resulting in stagnant IT wages. When the Russian Rubble depreciates,their IT services became cheaper because Russian salaries are nominated in thenational currency. However, Belarus is catching up and their IT services arealso becoming more affordable. Despite the difference in prices between Russiaand Belarus, Belarus is ahead of Russia in software exports. Belarus isactually one of the world’s leaders by computer service exports per capita.
- The emergence of strong playersin the market resulted in a significant increase in salaries. With the successof s number of local companies which have a product model, captive centers havebeen opened by a number of international companies. The competition for talentamongst these companies results in an increase in wages.
2. More specialization
Many companies in Belarus that outsourcesoftware stay competitive by developing niche expertise. Niche expertiseenables them to provide services of high value at higher rates. Clients areentrusting these companies to not only code based on ready specifications butalso to building whole solutions and system architecture.
Hi-Tec Park found that 30% of employees oftheir member companies work on fintech projects.
3. Developing products
Based on Goal Europe’s research, 67% of Belarusiancompanies that engage in outsourcing have their own products. Lack of aproduct-market fit, weak marketing and low promotion budgets is, however,leading to product development efforts that do not pay back. It, therefore,makes more sense for these companies to allocate the available resources to theprojects of a paying client.
Despite this disadvantage, success storiesdo happen. An example of these success stories includes Apalon, Pandadoc andQuoteroller.
4. More captive centers
The skills from Belarus are excellent andcome at an affordable price. The estimations provided by the developers arerealistic and they work promptly. Startups and big companies choose Belarus as the best place to set upR&D centers due to its large talent pool and favorable tax incentives.
The state of IT in Belarus isnon-exhaustively extensive with corporations setting up captive centers there.Companies that are now investing n Belarus include Fitbit, Netcracker,Playtika, Yandex, HTC, Netologic Inc and HIS Global.