Category: 2023

Facing the pandemic and pregnancy was more than scary for Naré Vardanyan but clearly not the first challenges she has faced. That she taught herself 11 languages was a precursor to creating a multi-lingual, world-wide platform.

"There was always a ceiling. One I knew I needed to crush to get to places and to do things.

I grew up in Armenia, a small country in the Southern Caucasus plagued by territorial conflict and war. I learned to read under candlelight, as we had no electricity or hot water for years.

As a kid, this was just another adventure that helped me develop a wild imagination and the ability to seek solutions with little to no means. Yet when I grew up, I realized things were not the same everywhere else in the world. Some people are born in rooms where they can realize their dreams, others, like me, have to queue outside or find new ways to break in.

I know 11 languages. I am often asked how. That was one way to entertain myself and gain new tools to solve problems globally. Very few people in the world speak my language. So I needed to learn their language to get them to listen to me.

After obtaining my degree in International Relations, I dreamed of working at a global organization addressing problems in developing countries. I had the opportunity to work for the United Nations focused on financial inclusion and poverty reduction. Through this experience, I came to realize that these issues will not be solved by world leaders only. Doing things from the bottom up is the only way to make a real difference and get a seat at the table. This is how I got into startups and entrepreneurship.

We founded Ntropy with my co-founder Ilia in the midst of a pandemic and economic uncertainty. As millions of people transitioned to working from home, others lost their businesses and essential means to survive. If you were not on traditional payroll, chances that you would get compensation were meager.

The goal at Ntropy is simple: change the way money is accessed everywhere in the world. Despite advancements in recent years to make capital more equitable, transparent, and automated, the underlying issue of data, hence trust, remains unsolved.

At Ntropy, we are developing a cloud-based platform to address this issue.

We firmly believe that financial data plays a crucial role in the functioning of businesses across various industries. However, making this data usable is a challenging task that requires a network-level approach. For instance, consider bank transactions. A quick look at your bank statement reveals the difficulties in understanding purchases due to non-standard merchant names and descriptions. While many companies have attempted to address this issue through internal solutions, they often fall short in terms of scalability, maintenance, and generalization.

This is where Ntropy comes in. Ntropy is the first to build a truly global, cross-industry, cross-geo, and multilingual financial data engine. We are building technology to help humans and machines understand how money moves.

This allows equalizing trust and access to money for businesses and individuals anywhere. Diverse data means diverse systems and algorithms that can equally qualify anyone regardless of background, race, ethnicity, postcode, and gender. One should be assessed in terms of financial behavior and potential, not purely based on history or the lack of it. Unfortunately, this is the system we live in today.

As a female tech CEO, I faced the limitations of the system personally. I raised our seed round through the pandemic, while my home country where my family lives, was at war. Between calls with VC-s and checking in with my Mum to make sure there are no air strikes where they are, I had to tell myself every day how privileged I am to do what I do.

A few days after we signed the paperwork to close the round, I found out that I was going to have a baby. This was terrifying. What are people going to think of me? Will they lower their expectations? Will I let them down?

Despite my concerns about facing bias as a pregnant woman and new mother, the reality was different. My investors have been consistently supportive and empowering. I successfully raised our series A funding in one of the worst market conditions, while caring for a six-month-old child. Venture capitalists we talked to questioned our technology and business model at times, but no one passed on us because I had a child.

While I acknowledge that bias still exists, I also know that there has never been a better time to be born a woman and build “empires.”

The ceiling is still there. Yet there are many more of us crushing it every single day. We can see the path that is beyond this artificial cap and that path can be anything we choose it to be."

“The preservation of Artsakh and the feeling of victory in the first Artsakh war gave us great strength and confidence, because we made this victory, which seemed impossible to many, possible. Thanks to the movement, we realized that we can prevent the disaster of losing our homeland through struggle.

The people of Artsakh continue to fight for the right to live a free, independent, dignified life, to avoid the threat of ethnic cleansing and deportation from the homeland hanging over our heads. In response, we received wars, loss of people’s life and difficult trials from neighboring Azerbaijan, which continue in the form of today’s blockade and the difficulties caused to us,” Ruben Vardanyan said in his message on the occasion of Artsakh Revival Day and the 35th anniversary of the Karabakh movement.

He noted that despite all the trials, the will to keep Artsakh Armenian remains unbreakable.

“All those who discuss and try to decide the fate of Artsakh without us do not understand that we took our fate into our own hands 35 years ago on this day. We paid a very high price for that decision.

Even if it takes another 35 years to reach our goal, it should not stop us, disappoint us, or take us away from our goal. We have enough will and persistence to achieve our goal and no one can take that away from us,” Ruben Vardanyan said.

After a devastating earthquake killed tens of thousands of people in Turkey, its border with Armenia was opened for the first time in three decades. 

On February 11 and 14, the Armenian-Turkish border opened to allow convoys of trucks carrying food, water, medicine, other humanitarian materials, and 27 rescue workers to make their way from Armenia to Adiyaman in southern Turkey. A few days later, those rescuers returned to Armenia via the same land border.

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These openings were the first in three decades and came amidst both ongoing negotiations to normalise Armenian-Turkish relations and a large-scale regional response to the February 6 earthquake that has so far killed 42,000 and left two million people in Turkey and Syria without homes. 

Turkey is a close ally of Azerbaijan, and Armenia’s borders with the two neighbouring countries have remained closed since the displacement and expulsion of 600,000 ethnic Azerbaijanis from Nagorno-Karabakh and surrounding territories – internationally recognised as Azerbaijan – by ethnic Armenian forces during First Karabakh War of the 1990s.  

The implementation of the 2009 Zurich Protocols between Turkey and Armenia were meant to normalise relations, but their implementation was stalled due to Azerbaijan’s objections. Turkey maintained that the return of contested territories to Azerbaijan was a precondition for establishing diplomatic relations. 

Soviet-era rail routes that passed from Turkey through Armenia have ceased operation. New pipelines and railways connecting Baku to Turkey go out of their way to bypass Armenia by transiting Georgia instead. 

Another important sticking point in past talks between Turkey and Armenia has been Armenia’s efforts to promote international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Following the massacres of hundreds of thousands of the Ottoman Empire’s Armenians in the mid-1890s and 1909, the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) faction of the Young Turks ordered more massacres and the forced deportation Turkey’s Armenian population to the Syrian Desert in 1915. Over one million Armenians were killed in these massacres and death marches. The position of the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs is that “it is factually problematic, morally unsound and legally unfounded to call this episode a ‘genocide’”. 

However, in 2020 during the Second Karabakh War, Azerbaijan retook much of the territory held by Armenian separatists and began the resettlement of displaced Azerbaijanis.  

In December 2021, Armenia and Turkey appointed special envoys to begin the normalisation process. They met in Moscow in January 2022 to begin talks. 

Turkey lifted its ban on direct cargo flights to Armenia on January 6. 

The Armenian and Turkish Ministers of Foreign Affairs met in Ankara on February 15. The Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, expressed gratitude for Armenia’s earthquake relief, and both officials announced the Armenian-Turkish border would open to third-country nationals and holders of diplomatic passports ahead of the 2023 tourist season. Both governments will also cooperate on the restoration of the historical Ani bridge over the Akhuryan River on the border of the two countries. 

“We must maintain this solidarity in the South Caucasus,” said Cavusoglu. “We highly appreciate Armenia’s humanitarian assistance, and I believe that it will also support the process of normalisation of relations between Azerbaijan, Turkey and Armenia.” 

His Armenian counterpart, Ararat Mirzoyan, was equally cordial. “I want to reaffirm the readiness and aspiration of Armenia to establish peace in the region and, in particular, to fully regulate relations with Turkey, to establish diplomatic relations, and to fully open the border between Armenia and Turkey,” he said. 

Armenia’s aid to Turkey has attracted international attention due to the historical and political context, but other regional actors have sent even larger rescue teams in shows of support for Ankara.  

To date, Azerbaijan has sent the most rescue personnel of any country. Baku sent 420 rescue workers to Turkey on February 6, the day of the earthquake, and another 227 on February 8. Azerbaijan has also sent a mobile field hospital, medical team, tents, bedding, and rescue dogs.  

Interestingly, Israel sent the second largest rescue cohort to Turkey – two teams totalling 450 aid workers and 60 tonnes of humanitarian materials.  

Israel is a close ally of Azerbaijan – an alliance that has provoked neighbouring Iran’s ire – and is an increasingly important actor in the South Caucasus. However, while Azerbaijan is close to Israel, Turkey and Israel have had significantly frostier relations. Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Eli Cohen met with Cavusoglu in Ankara on Tuesday to discuss earthquake aid and, together, announced the resumption of direct flights between Israel and Turkey. The first direct flight between the countries in 15 years departed the following day.  

Nevertheless, while both Armenia and Israel sent rescue teams to Turkey amid thawing relations, the two countries are increasingly at odds as Israel increases military aid to Azerbaijan and Armenia deepens ties with Iran. 

The European Union deployed Monday an expanded monitoring mission to Armenia's volatile border with Azerbaijan as Western engagement grows in the region seen by the Kremlin as its sphere of influence.

The risk of a fresh escalation remains high despite recent progress in peace talks between arch foes Armenia and Azerbaijan, which have fought two wars for control of the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.