STC General Director Named Russia’s 2011 Entrepreneur Of The Year in IT

St. Petersburg, 21.12 – Speech Technology Center (STC) was a jury favorite in Ernst and Young’s 2011 competitive search for Russia’s best entrepreneurs. STC’s General Director, Mikhail Khitrov, won the Information Technologies division of the annual contest.

The Entrepreneur Of The Year contest focuses on top managers and business owners—those having prime responsibility over their enterprises. Michael Khitrov of STC is one such owner, having launched the company over 20 years ago, and remaining at the helm. STC is now one of the main players on the international speech technologies market, a leader in voice synthesis and recognition, voice biometrics and audio noise filtering. STC solutions are being used in 74 countries.

STC’s achievements over the past few years are particularly impressive. The company’s voice identification system, currently deployed in Mexico, is the first of its kind to be implemented on a nationwide basis. STC’s Smart Logger II system is being used for quality control in Russian Railways’ contact center. And Khitrov’s company continues to forge ahead with major national and international projects and state-of-the-art innovations.

“To grow and manage a company like this over the past 20 years demanded a particular set of leadership skills—a talent for anticipating market trends, a commitment to innovation, and persistence in setting goals and achieving them,” Khitrov remarked after winning the award. “I’m deeply honored to have been nominated in such a prestigious contest, and it was a wonderful surprise to win in this category—all the nominees are amazingly capable entrepreneurs, all deserving of such an award.”

Mikhail Khitrov with the award

A competition shortlist was determined after contest participants underwent several stages of consideration. The criteria for selecting the winner included quantitative indicators—dynamics of turnover growth, profit increase and job creation metrics—and qualitative indicators—innovation in business practices, originality in product development, adoption of creative solutions in marketing and sales, development of national and international markets and the implementation of staff development programs. As per contest tradition, the selection juries in each category were introduced by last year’s winners; the juries are made up of independent experts and well-known business representatives.