The Priotix team

Priotix Software Development Company is one of the many ventures that are advancing Armenia’s burgeoning IT sector and advancing the country’s goals of becoming a regional hub for advanced technologies and innovation.

The company’s chief executive office Lusine Vardanyan said that Priotix has been developing and maintaining both enterprise software solutions as well as web and native mobile applications with global clients for several years. She also discussed the growth in IT and how technology is strengthening Armenia’s future. Below is her interview with Asbarez.

Asbarez: Lusine, how would you describe the IT market’s development in Armenia?

Lusine Vardanyan: Armenia has been one of the great innovation hubs for centuries, one that many have unfortunately never heard of. That is why many global tech companies are surprised by the quality results they achieve through opening development offices in Armenia.

As a strategic economic cluster for the country, the government tries to boost the IT sector by providing tax breaks and investments in education, which remains behind in its desired benchmarks.

Nationwide, there are about 800 IT companies. In the past ten years, the industry has been growing by an average of 23%, and a number of experts in and around the space have agreed that this growth will continue. You may also have seen an article, titled “Yerevan – Silicon Mountains,” in which Yerevan is ranked fourth among the top 10 startup capitals.

Asbarez: How else is that growth being encouraged and fostered?

L.V.: Promoting young talent is a priority in the Armenian IT sector. By 2018, around 19,550 people were employed by the industry, with the government’s target being to employ around 40,000 IT professionals by 2025.

The industry is also comparatively feminine. Almost 30% of Armenian IT professionals are women, though I still face predominantly male executives at industry events as one of the few female CEOs in the Armenian tech industry.

Lusine Vardanyan Priotix CTO Felix Khachatryan

Asbarez: What is the main focus of Priotix?

L.V.: Priotix, which was previously known as Sourcio, is a full-service custom software partner with an incredibly experienced senior development team based in Armenia. The team has been developing and maintaining both enterprise software solutions as well as web and native mobile applications with our global clients for several years.

Asbarez: How do you differentiate yourself from competitors in the domestic software development market?

L.V.: Our team prides itself on engineering maturity, quality and scalability of our delivered solutions, and our ability to meet time-to-market requirements. This is what makes the company different, and it’s how we’ve been able to secure a client return rate of more than 95% and a satisfaction rate close to 100%.

We are one of the very few software partners in Armenia securing high quality scalable cloud architecture and deployment, CI/CD, automated workflows, and testing environments, as well as automated monitoring and alerting.

Another differentiator of Priotix is that we usually don’t commit to short-term and one-time projects. Our strategic business model is partnering with global clients who are looking for long-term dedicated teams that fully substitute their IT departments.

We commit to those long-term software development projects which bring with them exciting end products and business propositions, as we usually negotiate equity partnerships for both the company and the dedicated team on top of signing a service contract. Partnership is our cornerstone business model both with the team and clients.

Asbarez: What are your company’s future plans, both in the near future and in the long term?

L.V.: One of our mid-term goals is developing a new service of big data engineering, trying to leverage the expertise of our certified engineers to assist both current and new clients with their ever-growing big data engineering needs.

Our company’s growth is very dynamic, so, in the long term, we plan to expand by bringing more like-minded experienced software developers, data engineers, DevOps, QAs, and other professionals to our great team.

Priotix team members

Asbarez: Can you tell us about some of the flagship products developed by Priotix?

L.V.: One such flagship product that we’ve partnered with is a Minnesota-based startup with an Armenian founder focusing on competitive video games and the esports industry.

We have developed an unparalleled web platform called WIN.gg that is a content hub covering such popular games as Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, League of Legends, Overwatch, Fortnite, and more.

It’s a venue through which gamers, enthusiasts, bettors, and any other industry stakeholders may benefit from individually customized news content, statistics, tournament standings, and more. In the near future they will also be able to access dynamic rankings and AI-powered match projections.

WIN also has its own CS:GO competitive league targeting up-and-coming teams looking to launch their careers forward. Winners League 3rd season starts from October 2019. And we’ve recently launched mobile apps for iOS and Android that can be downloaded from App Store and Google’s marketplace.

For now, WIN’s main markets are North America and Europ, with strategic goals of expanding to China and other Asian markets in the future.

Asbarez: What drew you to work on this particular project?

L.V.: You likely know that video gaming is booming in the United States and around the world, with 22.3 percent annual growth rate in the industry. 1 out of 4 millennials are playing at least one competitive game on a daily basis. The annual growth rates for both revenue and audience have been higher than for traditional sports for several years now.

With all of this being considered, we think WIN.gg has incredible potential.

WINN.gg  founder and CEO Serge Vardanyan

Asbarez: Can you tell us more about WIN.gg?

L.V.: Pre-seed and Seed investors of the startup company share our belief in the industry’s future and in the product’s potential, as the founder and CEO Serge Vardanyan has already raised several million dollars from local angel investors.

Serge has always had a passion for competitive gaming, as well as a dream of creating his own successful company. He was born in Armenia and moved to the U.S. in 2015 upon accepting a job offer from a leading international gaming technology and service provider to manage operations in the Americas.

He decided to leave that company and pursue his dream. He was fortunate enough to find like-minded peers with whom he could start building an ambitious product that would eventually better any potential competitor in the market. With that ambitious goal in mind, he turned to Armenia and contracted Priotix in early 2018 for web and mobile development services, and WIN.gg has been our flagship partner since.