Позитивные изменения. Том 2, №4 (2022). Positive changes. Volume 2, Issue 4 (2022)

It turns out that learning to cooperate with the authorities is a prerequisite for success?

Yes, that's right. I keep saying this all the time. You need people in the government to be able to come to you, feeling comfortable knowing that you're not going to beg for excessive favors, but that you, as a team, can actually do something.

So this is not the classic Russian story with the government in one corner and the NGOs and businesses in the other; we do everything together.

And what about the opposite? What hindered your development? What are the key deterrents?

Last year we barely had the time to produce and ship our wheelchairs; this year we have 300 units sitting in the warehouse.

The deterrent here is not another domestic manufacturer appearing, but the government purchasing wheelchairs from China.

Is import substitution possible in your case?

As a matter of fact, we are import substitution. Our wheelchair is made of 65 % Russian parts. If, God forbid, China is closed down for political reasons or due to COVID, we will be the only company able to make our wheelchairs domestically.

It might take us a month, or two, or three, or even six months to substitute the remaining 35 %, but, unlike the Chinese wheelchairs, we are that import substitution.

They say the hardest part is getting started.

How did your project begin? Where did you look for investment at the start? Maybe someone advised you on how to launch a social enterprise?

I've been in business for a long time, so I have more ideas than the opportunities to implement them.

I happily share my ideas so someone else can implement them.

It all started with wheelchair repairs. We were faced with the fact that there were no repair shops for electric wheelchairs. We got support from Vagit Alekperov's "Our Future” fund, which offered us an interest-free loan of 5 million rubles for five years. That's how we got our start.

Then, all of a sudden, I won the General Director Magazine award in 2013.

The award was 100,000 dollars (3 million rubles back in the day). We used the money to build our first premises.

And where did you look for like-minded people and a team?

At first, I tried taking a sales manager and turning him or her into a «social-mind» worker. Turns out it doesn't work that way. So we changed direction. We started sourcing "social mind" workers from the Ark events (kayaking and adapted beaches in Kaliningrad Region).