Before joining the business, Alexander Chachava changed several professions: he worked as a waiter, salesman, technical translator, and tried himself in journalism. In 2003, together with two partners, he created the IT company Leta, and later took up the Eset antivirus, receiving exclusive distribution in 11 countries. Actively, and sometimes even aggressively promoting these anti-virus products (in those years, Chachava was one of the most consistent opponents of the largest anti-virus software developer in Russia – Kaspersky Lab), the young businessman became known in the IT market. In 2012, his preferences in business changed dramatically – Chachava founded Leta Capital, in which he invested $ 15 million with partners (the second fund, already $ 50 million, appeared in 2018). Eight years later, Leta became a quite mature venture capital firm: the investment account already goes into the millions of dollars, under management is about $ 75 million. Is it a lot or a little? Chachava believes that it is quite enough to finance Russian IT startups. The COVID-19 pandemic will change the venture business, but will not kill it, he is sure. What is happening provides investors with new opportunities – the development of new technologies, primarily related to distance work and study, will accelerate dozens of times, Chachava predicts.
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– Your biography says that you and your partners started a business with a starting capital of $ 5,000. As you know, everything can be explained except the first million. Where did he come from?
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– In 2003, we started our business with the sale of licensed software Microsoft, 1C, Kaspersky Lab, etc. Just in 2003, our law enforcement agencies began to actively combat piracy with Microsoft, and the economy was growing. The piracy rate in 2003 was 98%, and in 2008 – 70%. That is, the number of licensed users has grown 15 times in five years, and in terms of money the market has probably grown 50 times. Actually, we are in this upward flow. If you look at the growth dynamics of many IT companies and resellers, it amounted to hundreds of percent per year. And we may have thousands. We probably earned the first million dollars in 2006. That is, revenue in 2004 was already more than $ 1 million, in 2005 it became $ 7-8 million, and in 2006 it was already good for $ 20 million. it wasn’t, and demand grew so that we barely had time to satisfy it. By 2011-2012 Our revenue was already for $ 100 million. Well, then another era began.
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– Are you currently engaged only in venture capital business or did you still have assets in IT?
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– Yes, they stayed. This is Iset Softwea, the exclusive distributor of Eset antivirus products in 11 countries. In Russia, he now has a market share in this area of about 30%. Leta Engineering is also now a focused system integrator, a leading developer of solutions for robotic customer service for banks, telecoms, etc. We are talking about electronic queues, sim-cards, document recognition systems and interaction with visitors. There are other assets, for example, the outpost specializing in information security. In these companies I have a controlling stake and above. I partially bought from partners, partially invested – it turned out differently. But my role in these companies is minimal, at the level of a member of the board of directors.
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“How did it occur to you to invest in venture capital?”
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– We experienced the crisis of 2008 rather hard, we were recovering for two years, then we began to think what should be done so that this would not happen again. Then for the first time I began to give options to managers and make entrepreneurs out of managers. And at some point I saw that the managers who became businessmen next to me work much more efficiently than I do. At this moment, the fundamental values of our foundation were laid – the key one is that we are friendly for entrepreneurs. I may not be the best entrepreneur, but I know what they need and how to help them achieve powerful results. Like in the movie “Mimino”: “If I feel good, I will take you so that you will feel good too!” My task is to make the entrepreneur in our ecosystem feel good.
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