Wikium

The Wikium project was founded in 2013 by Sergey Belan. In developing the simulators, the entrepreneur relied on the American project Lumosity, which was launched back in 2007. In the first month of work, the company's revenue amounted to 15,000 rubles, up to 100 people were registered daily ^[2] .

In 2014, Wikium became a participant in the IIDF accelerator and the Skolkovo Open University Skolkovo Foundation program. By the end of 2015, the number of registrations on the site per day reached 1,000, and monthly revenue increased to 210,000 rubles. One of the first with whom "Wikium" began cooperation in the scientific field, was the Center for Testing and Development "Humanitarian Technologies" at Moscow State University under the guidance of Professor and Doctor of Psychology Alexander G. Shmelev . Organizations have developed barter, by the condition of which “Wikium” helped the Center with promotion on the Internet, and scientists of the Center advised the company in creating new simulators ^[2] .

In 2016, 40 simulators were launched on the site, the number of users exceeded 250,000 people. According to company statistics, 12% of all users are engaged in simulators for more than a month, while in the first year of work, Wikium, this figure was only 2-3% ^[2] .

According to Vedomosti, in the middle of 2017, Wikium has more than 770,000 users in Russia and the CIS, and the company's revenue over the past 12 months amounted to 25 million rubles ^[2] .

According to the company for 2018, more than 3 million people are registered on the platform ^[3] .

Wikium is an online platform for training attention, memory and thinking. The user is offered cognitive simulator games aimed at the development of a particular brain function, and specialized courses for training certain skills, abilities and skills, focused on short-term thematic classes and aimed at accelerating their acquisition. After the client passes the introductory testing on the platform, he receives an individual training program for each day. According to the company, such simulators allow developing “weak” brain functions and maintaining “strong” ^[4] . In addition, since 2015, Wikium has been developing neurotraining devices based on biofeedback using a neural interface that reads alpha and beta rhythms to train the skills of managing deconcentration (relaxation) and concentration ^{[5] [6]} .

For 2018, the platform includes 51 cognitive simulators, which are based on the training methods of cognitive processes, scientific knowledge about the structure of perception, attention, memory and thinking. To verify the effect after training, diagnostics is carried out, the instruments of which are Schulte tables , the Stroop effect , the Crepelin score , ^[7] , the Corsi test ^[8], and others ^[9] .

In addition, the platform implemented the add-ons “Wikium.Poliglot” and “Wikium.Profession”, which are programs for the development of cognitive games-simulators for the development of language skills and development for a particular profession, respectively ^{[10] [11]} . According to the neuropsychologist and research associate of the company Nikolai Frantsuzov, the development programs used are “a scientifically based combination of certain developmental tasks, presented in a playful way, arranged in a logical sequence with regard to neuropsychological patterns” ^[12] .

Wikium is aimed at an audience of 7+ ^[9] , but the most active users are people from 25 to 67 years old in various fields of activity ^[13] .

Sergey Belan invested 5 million rubles in savings into his project and immediately attracted a co-investor from his former colleagues, who added another 2 million rubles. Later Belan bought out his stake ^[10] , and Artem Ovechkin joined the team, who invested another 10 million rubles (according to data for 2017, Ovechkin owns 5% of VIKIUM LLC and 30% of CRTKS VIKIUM LLC) ^{[2 ]} .

In 2014, Wikium submitted an application to IIDF, which eventually bought out 7% from a startup and invested 1.4 million rubles ^[14] , and also included the IIDF accelerator among the participants, taking 900,000 rubles as a training ^[2] .

In June 2017, Wikium attracted $ 2 million of investment from the Rukard banking processing system. According to the Kommersant magazine, the company received 35.15% of Vikium LLC, as well as 40% in CRTKS Vikium LLC. Sergey Belan controls his project with a share of 51.2%, and he owns 30% at the Wikum CRLs ^[15] .

At the time of the founding of the Wikium company, this idea was not new, but was not widely popularized in Russia. In 2013, they had only one competitor in Russia - the American Lumosity service. It was their platform that was taken as the basis for the development of the first Wikium simulators, but later the Russian startup expanded its product line and, unlike Lumosity, began to offer daily 15-minute workouts on gaming simulators for an individual development program, specialized online courses and neurotransmitters ^[16] .