76 Picsart in Armenia

Team 95 Poster

Team Reflection

Picsart is a global platform founded in 2011, known for its all-in-one digital creation tools that empower users to edit photos and videos, create animations, and design visual content. As a team exploring Picsart’s story , our journey revealed how a company based in Armenia, a relatively small country, could achieve global impact while maintaining strong local roots and commitment to sustainability development. This experience has challenged our understanding of global business operations and provided valuable insights into how companies can contribute to sustainable development goals while maintaining profitable growth.

What : Discovery Journey

In our interview with Picsart, we explore the company’s evolution and its impact on Armenia’s economy and society. As a tech giant in Armenia, Picsart is not only ranked among the country’s top taxpayers, but it has also created the Picsart Academy, which fills a void in Armenia’s service sector by developing IT talent. Team members resonated deeply with Picsart’s specific initiatives for local development, especially their focus on professional development for the younger generation. We learned that Picsart is not only committed to innovation and technological advancement, but also prioritizes the quality of life, work environment, and professional well-being of its employees, enhancing their well-being through the establishment of mental health days and the provision of comprehensive benefits. To us, this people-centered business model of Picsart is impressive.

So what : connecting theory to practice

A deeper analysis of Picsart’s operating model reveals a company that is deeply connected to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), not only in terms of decent work and economic growth, but also in terms of quality education and gender equality. “Gender Equality”. For example, the Picsart Academy and internal learning systems provide educational resources for employees and IT talent for the Armenian market, as well as supporting the development of female staff within the company. The company’s investments in technology and well-being not only energize the local economy, but also fit well with the social responsibility goals of the triple bottom line (economic, environmental, social).

Through our conversations with Picsart, we revisited the social role of business. Traditionally, we would think that business’ top priority is to generate profits, but Picsart’s actions show that it is entirely possible for companies to increase their economic impact by focusing on the well-being of their employees and the needs of society. Such a company culture, employee support system, and focus on fair pay made us think about how companies should treat their employees and society in the future. Picsart’s story also made us realize that in a cross-cultural context, innovation and collaborative spirit can have a long-lasting positive impact on a team. This idea was widely recognized in our team discussions and inspired us to bring this vision of social responsibility into our future careers.

Now what: future implications  

Going forward, we expect the insights gained from this interview to provide a deeper understanding of ESSE class, and to inspire the future development. It was a very impressive project to look for in the future, and we expect that the insights gained from this experience will help us in the future. Picsart’s success in Armenia, coupled with its social initiatives, highlights the potential of emerging tech ecosystems to produce globally competitive companies that retain their local roots. We are inspired to consider similar strategies, particularly the value of community investment and employee support, as a means of driving sustainable growth.Picsart’s journey has shown us that a commitment to positive social impact can also be a key driver of financial success. For Armenia, Picsart’s success has brought success as it has strengthened the country’s position as a center of technology and innovation. By fostering local talent and technological advancement, Picsart has set a precedent for other Armenian companies. In a region that is often challenged by economic and political factors, Picsart’s impact is an example of how business can contribute to the strength of a nation as an agent of stability and progress

Individual Reflections

Yunyi Zhang

As an exchange student in the University of Navarra and joined the COIL program, it was an impressive journey during my university life. In my home university, although we are an international university and have lots of foreign students, I have never had an experience working with students from different parts of the world like this, not only varies from countries, universities, but also different cultural backgrounds and time zones. The most challenging thing is negotiating time to meet and I truly know how hard it is to work across time. For this programme, I take the charge of Poster with Emilia. She is a kind girl from Canada and we worked well together because when I finished my part, she was able to make the poster prettier from a girl’s perspective and modify some problems as a native speaker. For the company, I’d like to thank my friends in UNAV, Davit. He worked hard to contact companies and get their permission, so we got a chance to interview a cutting-edge technology company that is in Forbes’ Best Startup Employers list and top 100 taxpayers list in Armenia. At the same time, the questions and answers were satisfactory and we learned a lot from them. Before this, I had little idea about Armenia, but this technology company helped Armenia, this small country, to solve many economic and employment problems. No single company in China can do that because we are a huge economy. As a local enterprise in Armenia, although it is an Armenian-American company, it has helped this small country achieve remarkable progress. This is a strong sense of social responsibility and role of entrepreneurship, which impresses me a lot and accords with the goals of the United Nations SDGs. I admire for this company after the interviews and research

Davit Baghdasaryan

Participating in the COIL program has been an incredibly meaningful experience for me. Not only because I got to work with people from different countries, make new friends and learn about teamwork on a global level, but also because I was able to get an interview with one of the largest tech companies of my own country. This project allowed me to share the culture and achievements of Armenia with peers from Brazil, Canada, and China. It felt very rewarding to present how a company from my country is making a global impact, not only through technological innovation but also by supporting Sustainable Development Goals and having a huge influence on the growth of the local communities. This experience taught me a lot about collaboration across different time zones, cultural backgrounds and perspectives. It also highlighted how sharing our unique backgrounds and traditions can help create a much stronger team and a sense of unity. I am grateful to my team members for being open to collaboration and very enthusiastic. Because of our great ambition, we chose to interview a large company, which brought challenges like balancing busy schedules, coordinating different time zones and even having to delay our interview with the company and needing to ask for an extension for our deadline. Despite these challenges we never gave up as a team and always found effective and creative solutions for our problems. Once we overcame these obstacles our teamwork ran on smoothly and I genuinely enjoyed working with everyone. Through this project we as a team also learnt how to be flexible despite having a well-thought plan and these lessons will hopefully stay with us and help us in our future endeavors.

Emilia Petkovski

The COIL experience for myself has been an exciting journey that has led me to learn a lot and develop many new skills. Working with people from different countries, time zones and cultures were great new challenges that I had never really had before, and that was one of the things that made this project so interesting. Participating in COIL allowed me to glimpse into the cultures of my international group members and almost experience how other students behave in university. It was also very interesting to interview an international organization, PicsArt, which is founded and based in Armenia. This too gave me the rare opportunity to not only learn about the internal workings of a real business, but an international business at that.

Mark Day

For me it was a challenging  experience that has been both fascinating and motivating. We had to deal with time zone changes while living in Brazil, which occasionally made coordination and meetings difficult, but it also strengthened our resilience and adaptability. It wasn’t always easy to juggle multiple job positions and responsibilities while working on this project, but it brought out the best in us and demonstrated how much we can do when we collaborate. Getting to know people from different cultural origins broadened our horizons and promoted mutual respect and learning. Some of us had never worked with a company like Picsart before, but it opened our eyes to new tools and inventive solutions.

In conclusion, our analysis and investigation of Picsart has shown us how a company can successfully balance global ambitions with local impact and social responsibility. picsarts commitment to Armenia’s economic and social development, and its focus on employee wellbeing and sustainable growth, demonstrates the power of a people centered business model. The company’s alignment with the SDGs of the UN, from promoting quality education to advancing gender equality, shows its promise to bettering its community and business simultaneously. This journey has broadened all of our understanding of the true capabilities of businesses and it is truly inspiring to see that companies can have such a role in positive change. picsarts success serves as a valuable example of how businesses can contribute meaningfully to society while achieving financial success, setting a standard for future innovations.