Mail.ru buys significant stake in Russian dating platform

Written on 29th August 2008                                                                                                              3 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

Russia’s largest Internet portal Mail.ru has acquired a 30% stake in its online dating partner Mamba, Quintura reports. They had to pay $15 million for a chunk of the enormous dating service – which offers dating platforms to several big Russian Internet parties.

Mamba has an user base of 10 million people. 1.5 to 2 million of them are looking for the love of their life (or a one night stand) on a daily basis. Together with Loveplanet (which is a destination site), Mamba holds 90 percent of the Russian $21 million dating market.

Not surprisingly, Mamba’s financial numbers are also impressive. The company reported revenues of $9.2 million in the first half of 2008, which meant a 68% percent increase from the first half of 2007.

Mail.ru had to pay the 15 million dollars to Finam, a Moscow-based investment and financial services group that acquired a controlling stake in Mamba in October 2005. It’s their third hit this year, as they recently also sold their stakes in Begun (to Google) and computer game publisher Buka.

There’s interesting twist to this deal

The people at Rambler HQ – that other big Russian web portal – won’t be amused by Mail.ru’s move. Rambler’s dating section uses Mamba’s platform, and accounts for 25 percent of Mamba’s usage. How will they feel about a competitor buying a rather large stake in the same service provider?

If Rambler decides to move its dating section to another platform, the revenue of Mamba could decline by 25 percent. Then Mail.ru will temporarily become a victim of its own deal.

Finam, mail.ru, moscow, rambler, russia, yandex

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Billboards in Moscow: Google’s act of desperation

Written on 7th June 2008                                                                                                              13 COMMENTS
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief

We’ve recently reported that the Russian search market is dominated by native search engines like Yandex. This leading service was recently valuated at $5 billion and is preparing for an IPO on Nasdaq this autumn. That must have scared Google, as they’ve launched an outdoor campaign called “Moscow 2.0″ – “Know more on Google.ru“.

According to industry analysts, Google has invested $0.5 million in this traditional way of advertising – which comes down to $250,000 per month. That has bought them 550,000 ad places all over Moscow – reports Quintura -, which Google has covered with 24 billboards, 58 benches and 450,000 thousand stickers. Where’s the 2.0 part, you might wonder. Well, Russian can embed their city snap shots and videos in Google Maps. How does that feel, Yandex? Already frightened?

advertising, google, moscow, search, yandex

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