For the second year in a row, the Russian version of the financial and economic magazine Forbes has compiled its "30 under 30" ranking, selecting the most promising Russians in 10 categories: "entrepreneurship", "finance and investment", "management", "sports and cybersport", "science and technology", "art", "music", "social practices", "fashion and design" and "new media".

Alexei Karfidov, the 29-year-old founder of Karfidov Lab Design Bureau, was included in Forbes' longlist in the "Science and Technology" category along with nine other young nominees, including: Valeria Kogan, CEO of Fermata; Andrey Garazha, CEO of Oncobox; Yuri Pekov, co-founder of Blastim, Xivelu projects; Alexander Shorokhov, researcher at Moscow State University's Physics Department; Alexander Mashrabov and Grigory Tkachenko, co-founders of AI Factory, Snap managers; Grigory Shalunov, project manager of the 3D meat in space printing project at 3D Bioprinting Solutions; Polina Shilo, program director of the Higher School of Oncology; Victor Kantor, Chief Data Scientist at MTS; Seva Zhidkov, co-founder of the startup Matt.fun.

Only three nominees were included in the final 30 out of 30 rating in the Science and Technology category: Andrey Garazha, Polina Shilo and Victor Kantor.

About the rating

In February 2020, Forbes published a form asking people under 30 to describe their talent. After receiving several hundred submissions, the editors formed a long list of 100 nominees, 10 in each category. The 40 members of the jury and the council of experts, the editors and the readers then selected the top 30 young and promising Russians (three in each category).

Among the jury members are experts who are themselves on the Forbes list: Playrix co-founder Dmitry Bukhman (34th place), venture capitalist and founder of RTP Global Leonid Boguslavsky (64th), and founder of SDVentures, Dating.com Group Dmitry Volkov (126th).

When compiling the list of winners, experts paid attention to a number of criteria: age under 30, recognition in the professional community, personal competitiveness on the Russian or global level. At the same time, the personal status of participants was not taken into account.

Co-founder of Karfidov Lab

Karfidov founded the company, which provides consulting services in the field of engineering, in 2014 together with his partner Dmitry Vasiliev, whom he met during his studies at NITU MISIS.

After six years in engineering and industrial design, the company already occupies about 25% of the domestic market with an annual turnover of 87 million rubles, and Karfidov Lab's annual growth is about 30%. Karfidov plans to close 2020 at RUB 180 million.

In 2018, the company became the best "Center of collective use of Technopark "Skolkovo" in its field. Meanwhile, NITU MISIS graduates develop business without partners and investors.

About the company

"Carfid Lab" renders services in industrial design of products, design documentation, enclosures and complex mechanical constructions, deals with electronics, circuitry engineering and development of printed circuit boards, programming, prototyping, piece production, launching into batch production. The accumulated experience of working on various products since 2014 allows us to transfer our experience and technologies, know-how when working on new products. Among the customers of Karfid Lab there are representatives of both large businesses (Sberbank, Rosatom, Rostec, Almaz-Antey) and small startups.

The company employs 25 highly qualified specialists. They have worked out an optimal development strategy which makes prototypes of future products as close as possible to serial products in terms of their characteristics and aesthetic properties.

In addition, Karfidov Lab has created its own educational course Karfidov Course for the development of an innovative product from the idea, research, conceptual and technical design to the launch of serial production. It is the only extensive course on this subject in Russia that is given in an interactive format, using examples from real life.

In the near future, the company's management plans to bring its own product line to the market and launch new areas of work, including the development of IoT devices, mobile applications, and the integration of "iron" projects with software.

Export

In addition to the successful development of the domestic market, Karfidov Lab actively develops the company's export. Thus, the annual export turnover at the end of 2019 was about 2.4 million rubles, and the revenue from the export of services is growing annually by 20%. The company has already implemented projects for customers from the UK, France, Germany, Singapore, Kazakhstan and Belarus.

At the moment, "Karfid Lab" closely cooperates and discusses possible joint projects with partners from Germany, Austria and China.

In the next five years, the company's management intends to open new offices and start active work in the markets of Europe, the USA and Asia. According to forecasts, the coverage of the foreign market will ensure the growth of Karfidov Lab's revenues up to 1 billion rubles per year.