It has been already two years that all the citizens and the guests of Yerevan have a “pocket guide” for cultural, entertainment and other events of the city.

Trying to solve the topical issue for organizing entertainment, the idea was born to create a centralized platform for the events of Yerevan, Yerevan Events, which is today one of the most successful business projects in the IT industry of Armenia.

Banks.am had an interview with Arthur Karchikyan, the founder of the "Sprint Center" company and author of “Yerevan Events” project.

-How and when was borne the idea to create such project?

- Being fond of entertainment I always faced the problem where to go to listen to music, to relax, to spend time with friends, what movies are shown at the cinemas currently and so on. I am sure that the organizing of entertainment has always been and remains one of the most pressing issues with which people are faced. An idea was borne to create a centralized platforms for activities and events of Yerevan, mainly mobile applications and website that would allow people to find quickly and easily the desired event. So that’s how yerevanevents.am is created.

- Who are the target groups of the project Yerevan Events, for whom it is prescribed?
 
- Yerevan Events is a guide for those who are interested in cultural, entertainment, business and other events of Yerevan. The project's mobile apps were developed in 2014 by the "Sprint Center" company. Applications are available in IOS and Android operating systems. By downloading “Yerevan Event” application, the users can be notified about cultural and entertainment events, film screenings, a variety of business events and parties of Yerevan, become familiar with the upcoming events of separate organization as well as with all planned events for the certain date. The application also saves the users’ time by sending an advance notice of events via SMS. Yerevan Events is available in Armenian, Russian and English languages, which allows to use the application not only the citizens of the city but also the tourists visiting Yerevan. With the help of tools existing in application, one can easily find the desired location or type of event.

- Which is the aim of the project and what kind of problems does it solve?

- Yerevan Events project is the first and only specialized event guideline at the moment which includes almost all of the events of Yerevan. In the platforms of Yerevan Events there are presented the performances of the theatres, club and pub concerts, list of movies in all cinemas of the city, etc. In recent months, we have presented the educational and business events as well.  The project was created based on a simple goal: to become a bridge between the event organizer and the people fond of entertainment. That is, to help the organization to find its audience, spectators, visitors and vice versa, help the fun-loving public with the opportunity to find and select the desired event to attend.  The organizations cooperating with Yerevan Events are able not only to present their events through our package of proposals in our platforms (web, apps, social networks, etc.), but also to benefit from our progress and other notification tools.

- What kind of organizations do you cooperate with?

- The aim of our project is to include and represent all of the events, so our commercial policy is to make the platform available for the smallest to largest organizations. The sole prerequisite of the cooperation is that the organization presented in the application should regularly come up with events. More than 50 organizations have been joined to the project Yerevan Events, including the National Academic Theater of Opera and Ballet after Alexander Spendiaryan, Yerevan State Chamber Theatre, Drama Theatre after H. Ghaplanyan, Yerevan State Pantomime Theatre, the State Puppet Theater after Hovhannes Tumanyan and State Puppet Theater of Yerevan, American University, and Moscow, Cinema Star, Kinopark cinemas, museums, music clubs, pubs, hotels, restaurants, etc. We also have solutions for production centers, promotion and advertising for single concerts.

- You have recently released a new version of Yerevan Events, could you point out which are the advantages?

- 2016 was a year full of innovations here. We developed our yerevanevents.am website and completely updated the applications. The former technical gaps and approaches have been corrected in new applications. The website and apps now are fully customized to meet the users' requirements. By registration, the user can select and follow only the events taking place in his preferable places and get only the necessary notifications.

Selecting any upcoming event or events, the user is getting reminded 3 hours before. The searching system has been improved, new differentiating filters for events have been introduced by category and by date. Overall, the idea of the project is not an innovation, there are similar projects in almost all foreign cities, but our advantage is the automation of the events’ collection. The human factor has been minimized here.

- How much time and efforts have been required for development of “Yerevan Events” and what kind of difficulties did you met along the way of its creation?

- One of the complications of project development is that the most of cultural institutions serving the public cultural entertainment find it difficult to allocate resources for marketing expenses. Of course, initially we work with some of them for free in the frameworks of our social responsibility, trying to contribute and present the events of these organizations.

The next problem is that the governing bodies of such organizations have lack of possession of promotion for high technology and modern tools, hence they are skeptical about the significance of such things. We recognize that we need time for this and go ahead stubbornly, believing that sooner or later all will come to this understanding.

By the way, Yerevan Events is one of the projects of “Sprint Center”. "Sprint Center" provides email marketing and PR services for more than 7 years. We are ready to solve these kind of problems together with state institutions by offering training and worldwide accepted and proven solutions for the marketing and PR agencies.

- Do you think there was need for the creation of such a project in Armenia?

- Back in 2014, while studying the market, we realized that till now there has not been any complete and centralized platform in Armenia, which will represent all the cultural, educational, entertainment and business events of the city. Many exciting activities and events are taking place within the date, but our citizens and guests find with difficulty their desired performance, the screening time of their favorite movie, the concert of their favorite band in a club and so on. Perhaps, the only helper is Facebook, but not all the events have been available there and not all of them have been registered.

We are presenting events for people with different preferences. Our app is trilingual, which also gives the opportunity to tourists to find their preferred event or venue. The first release of the application during the summer of 2014 became a popular app among the lovers of entertainment in a short period of time and became the most downloadable app among the users in Armenia.

According to partners Yerevan Events is unique and effective platform for the presentation and promotion of their events to the target audience, and it has so far been missing.

- What do you think, has the Armenian IT sector enough potential to become a serious technological country?

- Recently, there were created startups in Armenia in which success and demand only a few believed, but due to the diligence and the right business moves of the founders, they are considered as valid businesses at this point. Therefore, we also believe that great achievements are still ahead. I am also among those people who believe that our future depends on human intellect, and this is the time period for Armenia to enter to the global IT market. We just need to walk along the global IT requirements and take integration in processes.

- What novelties are expected in the coming year?

- As I already mentioned, in 2016 we completely renewed our applications and created yerevanevents.am website. Next year, we will try to cooperate with banks and commercial companies, as the events organized by them are not few as well, moreover are demanded by the public. We are also planning to make exciting technical innovations, about which I would like to speak after their realization.  

In 2017 we’ll try to find investors for the application of this business model in other cities outside of Armenia, in the case of large cities, it will provide a higher commercial efficiency.