18 COMPANIES WITH 600 EMLOYEES OPERATE AT VIASPHERE TECHNOPARK
Noyan Tapan
Aug 16 2006
YEREVAN, AUGUST 16, NOYAN TAPAN. 18 high technology companies with
their total staff to exceed 600 in the autumn of 2006 are currently
operating at Viasphere Technopark (Yerevan). The technopark’s director
general Aram Vardanian told NT correspondent about it. According
to him, these companies are engaged in creation of chip designs and
design tools, development of laser technologies and high-frequency
machinery. They also develop energy saving technologies, in particular
technologies allowing to generate electricity by using alternative
energy, particularly solar energy. The companies are operating not
only with Armenian and American but also with Canadian, French,
Austrian and Russian investments. In A. Vardanian’s words, thanks to
accumulation of sufficient intellectual potential at the technopark,
an irreversible process of self-development and generation of new
ideas started there. He expressed a hope that these tendencies will
become even more pronounced at the third stage of the techopark’s
development, which will last two or three years and during which it
is enviasged to increase the number of employees to a thousand, and
the number of companies – to over a hundred. The director general
said that 4 companies to "have grown up" at Viasphere Technopark
are now functioning on their own, outside the technopark. There have
also been 2-3 precedents when a company was sold by its founders. As
regards efficiency of the technopark’s companies, it is close to
efficiency of US companies engaged in the same sectors and equals the
index of annual production worth 100 thousand USD per an employee. At
the same time, in the US comapnies, the pay for the same amount of
work is 15 times as much as in Armenian ones. It is worth mentioning
that Viasphere Technopark was established 5 years ago on the basis of
"Transistor" Scientific and Production Enterprise’s Yerevan Research
Center by Aram Vardanian, the enterprise’s former director general,
Viasphere Technopark’s current director general, and Tony Moroyan,
a famous businessman in Silicon Valley (US).