Yakov Sadchikov Archive

Yakov Sadchikov, President & CEO of visual search engine Quintura, has put together the following list of the top 10 Russian web startups for 2011.

In September 2011, Russia became the largest Internet market in Europe with 51 million online users. Who are the top emerging internet companies that disrupt the Russian market. Find out below a list of top 10 Russian web startups of 2011.

1. Oktogo.ru

Having raised $5 million in venture capital from European early-stage investors, Oktogo.ru is #1 in Russian online travel. Russia’s ‘Booking.com‘ Oktogo.ru has not only collected the largest online hotel database in Russia but also baked it with user reviews from TripAdvisor.

Oktogo.ru CEO Marina Kolesnik is one of the most visionary female internet entrepreneurs from Russia.

2. ZeptoLab (Cut the Rope)

Russia’s answer to Rovio‘s Angry Birds, ZeptoLab‘s Cut the Rope reached 60 million game downloads in the first year from initial release without venture money.

Managed by Voinov brothers, Misha Lyalin and, from recently, Diana Moldavsky, Moscow-based ZeptoLab strives to leverage its Om Nom game character by releasing Cut the Rope sequel and branching out into comic books and plush toys.

3. Biglion

Heavily-funded by Tiger Global and Ru-Net, coupon service Biglion beats Groupon and other upstarts in the space in Russia. Biglion delivers the highest revenue growth in Russia’s internet history: from zero to $15 million monthly revenues in one and a half years. Biglion could be the next largest internet IPO candidate from Russia after Yandex in 2011 and Mail.ru Group in 2010.

4. Metabar

Metabar is the perfect example of how to turn a simple idea into a hundred million business. Founded by Yandex grad Michael Ushakov, Metabar offers browser toolbar creation service, just like Conduit. To grow fast, Metabar has raised $1 million from Runa Capital.
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Prof-Media, which owns leading Russian online portal company Rambler Media and entertainment content magazine publisher Afisha, will merge the two companies. The merged company under Rambler shall have annual revenues of over $150 million and challenge the Russian Internet market leaders Yandex, Mail.ru/DST and Google in Russia. I think that combining Afisha and Rambler would improve operational efficiency and provide Afisha with traffic from Rambler properties.

Olga Turischeva, who became Rambler CEO in April 2009, is going to leave Rambler Media by the year-end. The Rambler-owner Prof Media has appointed Nikolay Molibog as new CEO of Rambler. Previously, Nikolay Molibog was CEO of Afisha publishing house, which is owned by Prof Media.

Afisha publishes leading entertainment content magazines and web-sites Afisha.ru and NightParty.ru while Rambler operates a leading online portal in Russia, Rambler.ru.

Rambler‘s search market share in Russia decreased from 4.9% in March 2009 to 2.6% in June 2010, according to LiveInternet.ru. Rambler‘s advertising revenues declined over the past year. The expenses declined even faster, which improved operational profitability but that may be not enough for Olga Turischeva to stay in. She could re-join Vimpelcom (Beeline) where she worked prior to Rambler.
Continue reading “Rambler to Merge with Afisha – New CEO Nikolay Molibog from Afisha” »

AOL has collected final bids to purchase instant messaging (IM) service ICQ. The bids came from Russia’s Mail.ru-major owner Digital Sky Technologies (DST) and Rambler’s owner ProfMedia as well as from Chinese IM service QQ-owner Tencent, reported newspaper Vedomosti.

ICQ has 42 million active users, of which 18.5 million or 44% are in Russia.

The Russian entertainment media group ProfMedia offered $120 million for ICQ, the newspaper said. The Rambler-branded IM client software Rambler ICQ has 5 million active accounts. Rambler Media first partnered with AOL’s ICQ in 2005. The company should have earned revenues of $6 million from advertising in Rambler ICQ in 2009.

Mail.ru has 12 million registered users of its own instant messaging client software Agent@Mail.ru. It’s #2 popular IM software client in Russia, behind ICQ. Russian internet investment group DST, which owns majority of Mail.ru, offered more than $120 million for ICQ, reported Vedomosti.
Continue reading “AOL Collects Final Bids for ICQ from DST, ProfMedia (Rambler) and Tencent (QQ)” »

Yandex has started powering search contextual ads on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine. Here is a screenshot and link to search result page on Bing.com for a search query “Туры” (Tours) that displays Yandex.Direct advertisements both above the Bing.com’s search results and alongside them (to the right).

Yandex has announced a deal with Microsoft’s search engine Bing on its blog. The Yandex.Direct ads has been tested on Bing since September 2009.  The blog post said that “in so far, a share of Bing in Russia is not that big, but [Yandex] is very glad that one of the world’s largest companies has decided to monetize in RuNet with a help of Yandex’s contextual technologies”.

Bing holds 0.8% search market share in Russia, behind Yandex with 58.3%, Google with 23.0%, Mail.ru with 10.2%, and Rambler with 3.8%, according to LiveInternet.ru. Yandex held 54.5% of searches in Russia, Google – 34.5%, Mail.ru – 7.4%, Rambler – 1.9%, Bing – 0.4%, said comScore last August.

Since the Russian contextual advertising market is vauled at $400 million per year, Yandex powering search ads on Bing will translate in several million in additional annual revenues for both Yandex and Microsoft.

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