Sberbank of Russia : Sber to provide free access to training its virtual assistant Salute on Smart Market platform

For the first time ever, Sberbank will provide external partners with open access to the Smart Market platform, which will allow both budding entrepreneurs and large companies to teach new skills to the Salute family of virtual assistants.

Smart Market will let businesses independently create skills for Salute for free, promote their products, and find new customers by interacting with more than a hundred-million-audience of the Sber ecosystem. The partners who decide to receive income from their services and monetize the latter will be added to Sber's revenue share program.

To create an application with the Smart Market, you do not need to know a programming language, as a skill can be easily created using the visual element designer. There's also a 'write from scratch' option for advanced users.

Restaurant chain Coffeemania and S7 Airlines are among the companies that got early access to the Smart Market platform.

Moreover, Sberbank is set to incentivize authors of smart skills for the Salute family. Each quarter, the creators of SmartApps may challenge for up to RUB2.5 m and a RUB250,000 grant that can be allocated for the use of SberCloud services.

David Rafalovsky, Head of the Technology Unit, CTO and Executive Vice President of Sber:

'When creating Smart Market, we wanted corporations, as well as small teams and independent enthusiasts to introduce our users to their services and products. Independent people are the ones who can come up with the most original ideas. We have adapted the platform's tools for authors with different backgrounds and skills and believe that the opportunities that open up can revolutionize the way a business interacts with its users every day.'

The skills that can be created on the platform are called SmartApps. They will work regardless of how a customer interacts with Salute, be it touching the screen, chatting, gestures or voice. The created skill becomes available on all devices with the Sber virtual assistant, from Sberbank Online on a smartphone to the operating system of Honor TVs, which will be marketed in Russia in 2021.

The Smart Market was developed by SberDevices and the Sber ecosystem. Due to this, the platform takes into account the peculiarities of business models, while Sberbank's unique expertise in financial services for various entrepreneurship types will allow the authors of SmartApplications to manage the income the latter generate.