Davit Yan: Our dream is that people return and change Armenia
Davit Yan was born in 1969 in Yerevan. Davit’s father is Chinese, and her mother is Armenian – both physicists at the Institute of Physics in Yerevan. Davit Yan is the founder and chairman of the board of directors of ABBYY company. Davit is a candidate of physic-mathematical sciences and has received a prize in science and technology from the government of Russia.
Davit Yan grew up in Yerevan and studied at the physic-mathematical school of Yerevan. He graduated from the Physics-technical University of Moscow and his thesis was on the topic of “DSL dictionary languages.” In 1989, while studying at university in Moscow, Davit Yan and Alexander Moskal from the microelectronics institute established Bit Software company, which was renamed to ABBYY Software House in 1997. The company has offices in over 8 countries and has 30 million customers from 130 countries. At the age of 21 Davit created Lingvo electronic dictionary. He is also the author of FINEREADER software and the first pocket computer in the world, which made him famous not only in Russia, but in Europe and the US as well.
In 2005 Davit founded “iiko” company that developed a new system for restaurant and hospitality business management. He is founder of a number of clubs and cafes in Moscow such as FAQ-Cafe (2004), ArteFAQ (2007), SQUAT Cafe (2009) and Grimm Sisters (2009). Since 2005 Davit is contributing to Ayb school in Yerevan as a co-founder, and is a monitoring member of the Physics-technical Institute of Moscow. In 2007 Davit issued Lingvo Big Russian-English Dictionary. He is author of a number of publications and holds many licenses. According to Forbes, Davit’s wealth is 200 million dollars and is considered one of the top ten people in Russia that started doing business from scratch.
-As a co-founder of Ayb school you participated in the opening of the Srbots Targmanchats (Holy Translator’s) church at Ayb school premises. What does this church mean for you?
-We believe that it was due to the church that the Armenian people were able to protect their culture throughout numerous wars during many years. For Ayb school it is very important to provide all conditions for children to study in the best educational institutions and meanwhile have something that connects them with their home so that they return and do something good for Armenia. I think this church in the area of the school will be a strong link that connects children with their country, even if many of them do not go to that church. Holy translators symbolize the illustration and protect our schools, and we believe that the church will help children receive not only technological or other type of education, but also spiritual values.
-You are a successful man. What’s the secret of your success?
-My all friends that are helping the school and I believe that the secret of our success is education. These are not mere words, it is really what I believe in. We studied at the physic-mathematical school of Yerevan. That is a place where we saw not only strong teachers, but also were in an environment of strong students, which was very important. The environment we grew up in was decisive for us. For example, when the pupils of other schools were going out to play after classes, our pupils were coming back from Moscow and telling us stories about the best universities in Moscow, physics and mathematics. The environment, people and everything else was very strong and connected with education. I believe it was the education I received at the physic-mathematical school that helped me enter a university in Moscow.
The fact that I studied with strong people gave me an ability to find people like me and establish a company, which currently employs 2000 people and is represented in 14 countries. Everything started from school; the school was the place where I found important people. By saying school I also mean the teachers because everything is connected. My teacher was my father, my teacher of physics was Garik Grigoryan, and later on that tradition continued at the university. What I say is about school and education as something big. This is the reason why my friends from the physic-mathematical school of Yerevan and I thought about how we could help Armenia, we decided to establish a school, which would also help to make the quality of education and qualifications of teachers, and generally the respect to teachers in other schools as well much better and higher. This is where everything will start from.
-You are managing a large company with representation in 14 countries. Are you planning to open an office in Armenia?
-We do not have an office in Armenia yet, but we have partners. We would like to open an office in Armenia and develop some components here. In fact we are monitoring the operations of newly established companies in Armenia. We are interested in new ideas, but in fact those are not many enough to interest us to some extent. I think that due to projects like the Ayg, Tumo and the school established in Dilijan by Ruben Vardanyan we will be able to give more opportunities to young and passionate people to grow and offer products. If this happens, not only us but other companies as well will establish offices in Armenia.
-You have reached high achievements in your life. Are there any achievements you are chasing now. It is said that successful people do not chase achievements but set goals. What is your plan about this?
-It is a difficult question. If we think about why people generally live and why businesspeople generally do anything, we will give the answer to that question. Everyone who creates something aims to make the world better; it is done to change people and make them happy. ABBYY is creating a product in the area of artificial intellect and semantics, which enables people understand each other better. Semantics is natural language understanding, and the purpose is enabling the computer understand what people say.
Now people are using computers but time will come when computers will be smart enough to talk to people in human language; not only computers will talk but refrigerators, TV sets, cars, etc. We are developing that language that can be understood. We believe this changes the world and makes everything better, and it enables people do more and spend more time on creating new things. It is our dream to develop this process till the end. Nobody so far has reached perfect results in this technology.
There are people who say it is impossible, but we believe it is possible, and we will work for that purpose. This is what ABBYY’s projects are about. Our dream that is connected with Ayb school is to raise 45 million dollars. We, the founders and donors of Ayb school, have received the Armenian president’s support and all of us have raised 7 million dollars to build the first building of Ayb school. However, this is not enough because we want to build a whole city there, which will be an innovation center, a special arts center with a park for inspiration, where every graduate will bury a capsule with a note of commitment what he/she will do for Armenia in the future. There will be a square where people can see the names of those who buried their capsules in the park. The innovation center will be a complex with modern technologies, equipments and robotics. All this cost a lot of money.
The minimum project cost is 45 million dollars. This is our goal and we need to raise that money. We believe that such intellectual projects will change the environment in 5-10 years; they will change the quality of pupils. In the future these children will become scientists, finance professionals, businessmen, engineers and will come back to Armenia to do new projects. Our dream is that they return and change Armenia.
– Do you consider yourself a happy man?
– I have always considered myself a happy man, even at the time when I entered my university in Moscow. I think happiness does not depend on anything; happiness is something that is inside a man, and if someone is happy, he/she is happy notwithstanding any external factors.
By Lusine Movisisyan
