We interviewed Slava Babienko, the CEO of Koronapay Belarus. With over 15 years of experience in IT, Slava is using his extensive expertise to provide exceptional services to his company. His personal main goal, as we learned through our interview, is to provide a mental health product based on science that can help people overcome their difficulties.
For the past 5 years, he has been using his innovative ideas to produce high-tech products in terms of healthcare. Slava and his company plan to expand fully in the MENA region and plan out several things for this purpose. Learn more about Slava Babienko and his company through our interview below.
Can you introduce yourself?
I have more than 15 years of experience as the head of medium and large IT companies (with more than 1000 employees). My main activities are fintech, MedTech, and classic outsourcing! Now, I am currently the CEO of Koronapay Belarus. It has an annual turnover of more than 20 billion dollars. I am also responsible for the MENA region.
What problem did you encounter during COVID-19, and in general, what problems do such large businesses have?
For many years, I have observed such a problem (and experienced it myself) – it is emotional burnout, stress, and anxiety among employees. I am against prescribing medication for any minor reason, so my team of doctors, IT engineers, and I have meticulously and continuously created a mental health product. Our initial goal was to offer people a product based on science, really able to help overcome these difficulties, and not grounded in religion or esotericism.
Have you managed to achieve your goal?
Yes, with the support of the Ministry of Health and doctors, we have created not just one product but an ecosystem of products that deal with problems such as stress, anxiety, insomnia, and others. It’s not just software. It’s hardware too.
We called it the #1MentalHealth Boutique – Smart Meditation.
We have a short video that gives full insight into our product.
What does the product consist of, and what is your goal in the MENA region?
MENA has long been a second home for me. I chose Dubai as the head office for the company. Our product is a high-tech project that contains a Mobile App, a Meditation Mask, BrainWaves HeadBand, and a Virtual reality app.
I’d like to add that they can be used separately or complement each other.
We have adopted all content into 7 languages in 3 years and are ready for release in 80% of the countries across the world. While our competitors were investing in advertising, we were improving technically to become the right product to meet the needs of even the most demanding users. We have our own production and recording studio and a team of practitioners. This is what has made it possible to create a product that I, as an IT person, am very proud of!
Currently, our main goal in MENA is to find a strong partner (or partners) who would be able to cover this region in terms of business development and allow us to move on by launching the product in other regions. By 2027 we expect to reach preIPO with over 3 million active users!
Does your product have any new areas of interest for investors?
While developing the product, we collaborated with all kinds of specialists, and it so happened that in addition to the B2C branch, we have a whole market of B2B clients.
These are:
Yoga studios – which are interested in our enterprise version to expand their services,
Shopping malls – the designer of a Bentley car showroom created a shopping island for us – a point of sale for mental health products. For someone, it could be an additional source of profit as well as a novelty on the market, making it stand out amongst similar islands.
Airports would like to have our stand in the duty-free zone, as mental health practices reduce stress before a flight, which is such a great help for the airport and the carriers.
What amount are you raising, and what for?
In this round, we are raising $0.7-1 million to fully expand into the MENA market and become a top 3 mental health product in the first year. This amount is solely for marketing and advertising, as I continue to cover all other costs myself! As for future investor(s), we are ready to promise high ROI (above average) and offer to reach an IPO after the launch in the global marketplace (technically, we are ready), but to become top 5 in the world, marketing and PR will take about two years.
Connect with Slava Babienko on e-mail slava.babienko@gmail.com or whatsapp +375296778833