Full-service company
We identify stakeholders, their problems, project objectives and criteria for achieving them
We gather business requirements, study the business processes, develop users' scenarios within the product, write down non-functional requirements
We make a list of required screens and draw a black and white version that reflects the set of elements and their location on each screen
With all the creativity we turn layouts into lush final screens and work through all their states, transitions between them and animations
Вased on the specification, we allocate a minimum viable product version that will solve the stakeholders’ main problems, and we do a lot of coding
for the right route
We remember the company to be a spring chicken, but already fully-fledged because we are just a miracle
In October 2007, the individual entrepreneur Shalagin P.S. got officially registered. This was the company's take-off with three founders of the business: Pavel Shalagin (Citronium's CEO) and two other developers.
At the time of the company founding, I had already had experience in programming, designing, team leading and project management at an IT company. After working freelance, my colleagues and I decided to set up a business in construction on our own. We had all the necessary resources to get started. Apart from programming, I had good knowledge of setting up and running a business as I had graduated from Volga State Technological University (Economics Department). My friends and I built up the initial capital and started work. The co-founders of the company were Max Kraev, who now lives in England and develops the Codio project (it used to be our common project), and Mikhail Loginov who also works on the Codio project.
The registration of a sole proprietorship was kind of a funny story. We submitted all the documents, passed all the inspections. At last, it was time to register the company. Unfortunately, it happened so that I got into hospital. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity, so I took a taxi and went to the tax office in my hospital slippers. It worked. The main thing is to act.
From the very beginning, I wanted to create a company where you can have a dialogue, where employees are listened to and heard, where everyone's opinion is important and taken into account, where people breathe freely under one roof and it is easy to work with each other to create cool things. I wanted to avoid some ostentatious moments, that we are "the best of the best" and all that sort of thing. I was especially against forcing out unhealthy efficiencies. I wanted to work more on creating an atmosphere of working drive, that was a priority.
Speaking of one roof over our heads. We rented a flat with walls only. We made all the repairings on our own: we hung the wallpaper and brought in the appliances. We started working with a US entrepreneur who was running a video publishing platform called Adaptive cast.
The team consisted mainly of students from Volgatech, where I was teaching. There were some experienced developers too. So, gradually the team came together, mainly from programmers. I searched for projects on exchanges.
And then the first big test happened for what was then still a small company. After a year and a half the financing of the main project was suspended. And for the first time the young company found itself in a situation where it was necessary to actively sell and build up a customer base. Then they began to think about positioning and our website. As a result, the name Citronium was born.
One of my students created it. It was like quasi-Latinism - Citronium. The “IT” letters inside the word hinted at the professional sphere. And the citrus fruits, in our case lemons, were an allegory of the freshness of the solutions created.
At that time we found clients who still work with us today - for over 10 years. And one of the projects became a major one - Application-craft. It was developed for a UK client. The startup for electronic forms finally evolved into a Visual Development Environment for mobile and web applications.
The project changed its business idea a few dozen times and ended up as the e-learning platform for students - Codio.
While working on Application-craft, we got the necessary web-expertise and among the first in the city, we started working with new technologies, such as React, Angular. The platform is big, the project is complex, we had to invent technologies. We can say that we started making the framework even before the first React and jQuery appeared.
We are usually quite quick to find ways out of all sorts of situations, not only in some professional matters, e.g. lack of technologies we need, but also, for example, in the case of quick moves. One day we received a request to leave the premises and we had to quit our "office" in a rented flat. And in a short time without any fuss, we moved into our own space - an office flat on the 17th floor of a high-rise building. We settled on 100 square metres in the legendary Semnashka (eng. Seventeenthie). The work, as well as the floor space, increased greatly.
The year 2013 was a pivot point for us when our major clients came from England, the USA, Italy, France and, of course, Russia. By that time, we had realised that we were trusted and that cooperation brought significant financial results. Our relationship with our clients turned into a real partnership. We were fully involved in each project and treated them as our own. Thanks to our reputation of reliable developers we made contracts with such big brands as KIA, Volkswagen, MVAgusta, Sberbank, Vodafone, Lukoil, Tatneft, Russian Ministry of Education, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Leroy Merlin, A101(Moscow), CDS-Group (St.Peterburg), Trust3-Group (Ufa). Поворотным для нас стал 2013 год. В этот период появились крупные клиенты из Англии, США, Италии, Франции и, конечно, из России. За эти годы мы поняли, что нам доверяют и сотрудничество приносит весомый финансовый результат. Наши отношения с клиентами стали партнерскими. Мы точно вовлечены в каждый из проектов и относимся как к своим собственным. Благодаря репутации надежных разработчиков у нас появились контракты с такими крупными брендами как KIA, Фольксваген, MVAgusta, Сбербанк, Лукойл, Vodafone, Минобр РФ, МИД РФ, Татнефть, Леруа Мерлен, А101, ЦДС, 3 Трест.
In 2014, Citronium changed its organisational form to Ltd. We continued upskilling in service development, expanding our expertise in other areas: copyright protection, telemedicine, geolocation, travel security, logistics, biometrics, personal identification, game dev, gamification, fintech, e-commerce, LMS, marketing in HoReCa, fitness, social networks, augmented reality, sharing, public services and tourism. And we are still expanding our spheres.
All this time, simultaneous with the service development, we had been working on our own products, trying to find the field, testing different niches, failing but keeping looking for. We chose visualisation of building management, so-called Facilities Management. We decided that the visualisation of plans with interactive areas could be a success in many areas, and particularly of interest for exhibition organisation. So in 2010, we created Expospar from scratch. We thought that it had to be purchased by exhibition organisers. The application was a workspace where one could enter a list of exhibitors, upload an expo plan, and create a business programme. Everything was formed into a set of widgets to be built into the official exhibition website.
Together with our team we put on promotion T-shirts and went to an exhibition centre to talk about this product. Despite our strong faith, the product failed to take off.
Technically everything was done perfectly, but there were no sales. For this reason, there was no money for development. In 2012, we had to stop the project.
A new product, Planstory, was developed on the basis of Expospar. This was a solution for marking interactive areas on a drawing. The product was a widget embedded into the website. Once again we made a big mistake. In positioning that time. We called it a "tool for everything". In other words, if you want it for open spaces, be my guest, if you want it for shopping centres, no problem. If you want it for a fire alarm system, that's fine. So, for everyone, and no one in particular - a typical marketing mistake. The most amazing thing for us was that after we made the project in English and connected the payment system, we got 4 sales within a year and without any involvement, we earned $1000. At the same time, of course, we had spent a lot more. But this was already a victory for us, as it was the first time we received real money for our own product. Most importantly, we realised what we were to focus on.
Then we paid attention to the American mobile solution called PlanGrid that was gaining popularity. It dealt with marks and comments on a drawing. We had the same features. Within a couple of months, our Planstory was converted into an application and a web solution. In 2014, we actually had a new product, PlotPad. We expected that the money would definitely flow in. But, as it turned out, there was one more mistake. We planned to sell it in the USA, but PlanGrid was already a success there.
In 2015, Mobile Solutions for Construction Ltd. appeared (mrspro.ru) and we refocused the product on the Russian market. PlotPad became StroyControl (Construction Control in Russian). We went to the enterprise market. We realised that the product was in demand and we started to sell it to legal entities.
A year later, we had 15 clients and a total income of $36,000. This was already close to the return of investments. But most importantly, we got some major customers. Our product was used at the construction of the Moscow Central Ring, one of the capital's largest infrastructure projects. We realised: StroyControl (PlotPad) had grown from a start-up into a full-scale successful business.
A year later, we signed a contract with Tatneft and the project was awarded “the Best Cloud Solution for the Oil and Gas Industry” at the IX Best 10 IT Projects for the Oil and Gas Industry competition. It took us 8 years to find our niche and we continue our research.
Citronium encourages experiments in every way. There is always someone to consult with. There are veteran developers who joined the company almost 10 years ago as students, and today lead technical departments, train and develop specialists, always support and provide guaranteed results. There are also young talented graduates from the University who lead new directions and introduce fresh approaches. For example, in 2018, we were the first in the region in native development.
We follow design trends, too. And in 2019 we decided to rebrand the company's corporate identity. We changed the design of the logo. Then we developed a brand book, and in 2020 we launched a new version of the website. And we have a mascot, or rather two mascots - the experienced Cynickadee and the audacious Wolfie. Read more about this on the blog.
Citronium has launched web-development courses. Two batches of fresh developers have already graduated from them. We have also two big projects for Lukoil and Sberbank added to our portfolio. Citronium team has made an application for Irena Ponaroshku, a Russian celebrity, and people are sure to become happier thanks to the project “Prosto: meditation and sleep”.
Now we know each other even better. We are open for cooperation. We are happy to bring our customers value!
