A factory owner and merchant of the first guild since 1839, Pyotr Vasilyevich Sergeev was also a public figure and hereditary honorary citizen. He was the son of the Borov merchant Vasily Ivanovich Sergeev, who joined the third guild of the Penza merchant class in 1793. Pyotr's uncle, Alexey Ivanovich Sergeev, founded a soap factory in 1800 and opened a hospital for the wounded in his home in 1812.

Pyotr Vasilyevich began his business by purchasing the Bolshaya Surskaya mill from Nikolai Fyodorovich Kishensky. In 1850, he leased 12 lakes in the Kalashny Zaton area, where he built dams and a timber wharf. That same year, he established a paper mill in the northeast of Penza on 33 desyatinas of land, equipping it with modern machinery.

By 1866, 120 people were employed at Sergeev's factory, and the value of the products exceeded 300,000 rubles, making it the largest enterprise in the province. Pyotr Vasilyevich was known as a prudent and enterprising man who cared for his workers and was respected by the townspeople. He was elected mayor of Penza three times.

On May 17, 1844, Sergeev founded one of the first urban public banks in Russia, which financed the development of the urban economy and trade. Thanks to the loans from this bank, Sergeev built his factory, and other entrepreneurs, such as Pyotr Grigoryevich Beloyartsev and Ivan Vasilyevich Bryushkov, opened cloth factories. The industrial rise of Penza was largely due to this bank and its founder.

Since 1882, the products of the Sergeev factory regularly participated in World and All-Russian exhibitions, receiving gold and silver medals.