The largest international forum and business market Versus has ended in Moscow. Over three days, the event was attended by 4,571 people. The guests got acquainted with 78 franchise concepts, studied 47 offers in the field of vending, as well as 25 projects in the field of B2B, services and e-com. They also had the opportunity to visit 5 forum platforms, where more than 107 speakers spoke.
Among the exhibitors of VerSous are the Yandex.Market and OZON marketplaces, the Uryuk family restaurant chain, Il Patio and Burger Club. The Soyuzmulfilm project with the Soyuzmultcafe concept and the Sushi Wok fast food restaurant chain, which until now worked mainly in the street retail format, with a branded food truck. X5 Retail Group exhibited a reverse franchising project under the Pyaterochka brand, a Permanent Sales Store (MPR) and a retail chain of goods stores at affordable prices MODI offered models of their franchises. Also present were representatives of fashion retail - manufacturer and distributor of children's clothing ORBY, as well as the famous brand of men's and women's shoes Francesco Donni and many others.
In addition to franchising projects, a large share of the VerSous exposition was occupied by vending concepts and b2b projects. "Everything that should be in the arsenal of a progressive business," the participants emphasize. These are self-service coffee shops, for example, "Coffe make", ASPvending, micromarkets from Vendshop, and aquavending offers from Barrier and Source of Health, and video surveillance systems with cloud technologies, such as LinkVideo. And payment solutions, for example, Modulbank presented a service for owners of coffee shops CafeStore, which provides customers with access to a closed marketplace of specialized goods at purchase prices. And the fintech partner of VerSous "Fast Payment Systems" SBP presented a case of a static QR code with an NFC tag, allowing parallel transmission of payment information via SBP, including on the phone screen. "And not to lose a customer who forgot his wallet. If you do not implement these options now, tomorrow you will have to catch up with the laggards," says Andrey Kovrigin, Sales Director of SBP.
The VerSous business program gathered professional experts and trendsetters on five platforms – e-commerce, Marketing Tech, Vend Tech, Franch Tech and Human&Future. Franch Tech started with the opening session "Points of growth of franchising in Russia", during which participants discussed adaptive mechanisms to the new business reality. Here, Ekaterina Soyak, CEO of EMTG and organizer of VerSous, presented a universal and objective tool for evaluating franchise projects – the Buybrand franchise rating. Its details can be found on the Buybrand portal and in the electronic version of the Kommersant newspaper. Possible growth points for business development were announced at Vend Tech. During the work, E-Com Tech was told how to do business with China and work effectively on marketplaces. Marketing Tech discussed the introduction of artificial intelligence into business processes, performance sales, work with neural networks and ChatGPT integration. And the program of the Human&Future Hall raised the issues of business entering virtual reality and the metaverse, the role of artificial intelligence in the creative industry and deeptech-technology.
According to the guests and participants, VerSous was a busy opening of the business season and set the main business trends for the coming year.
"We were at VerSous last year as well. This year pleases with the number of visitors, we did not expect such a flow of guests. It is also gratifying that there are many visitors from the regions, we will work with them. VerSous is one of the strongest exhibitions in Russia and it is useful for any company to participate here," says Kirill Skotnikov, Director of franchising at Foodband.
"It seems to me that many people here are set up for concrete solutions to problems and the exchange of live contacts in order to reach their goal. We have had cases when manufacturers came up with laptops, showed examples and asked if they were working correctly with labeling. We found a way for several participants to simplify logistics processes right on the spot," said Ilya Grebnev, project manager of the Voda commodity group.
"We have been participating for several years, today VerSous is one of those platforms where entrepreneurs, representatives of various industries offer their services and products. And it's very nice when we get feedback, add more, add value to the product. A cool platform for interaction with all market participants. We need more such events," Andrey Kovrigin believes.
The next major event for entrepreneurs will be a new project of EMTG, dictated by modern realities – the French congress in Kazakhstan Buybrand Central Asia (https://buybrandexpo.kz/) . The annual Buybrand Expo franchise exhibition will be held in Moscow in September.
Results of VerSous you can check here (https://versous.ru/#history)
