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March 2020 www.intellinews.com I Page 5
Beetroot, a Swedish IT company with offices in five Ukrainian cities, acquired two other companies: Ukrainian Onlinico and Swedish Aducera.
Founded in 2012, AVentures Capital a major tech investment fund and M&A advisory from Ukraine. With over 20 companies in its portfolio, AVentures Capital targets tech entrepreneurs
from Ukraine and other CEE countries to fuel their global expansion while leveraging on local R&D capacities.
AVentures Capital’s DealBook has been published every year since 2016, with participation from Ukraine Digital News. The report covers only the deals, which were announced publicly.
Russian video streaming platforms gain speed
As the Russian video streaming service segment is booming. The major players are securing funding and launching original content production.
Last month, Russia’s largest video streaming platform, ivi.ru, said it is considering an IPO on Nasdaq by the end of this year with JP Morgan Chase underwriting the floatation, bne IntelliNews reported in February.
Back in 2018, ivi.ru CEO Oleg Tumanov mentioned the possibility of an IPO in 2020 and the company has been talking about since they gave bne IntelliNews its first ever interview the international media in 2013.
The move would make ivi.ru Russia's first online video service to go public, also making it the segment's highest valued company, worth over $700mn according to analysts quoted by Kommersant.
Launched in 2010, ivi.ru became Eastern Europe's first video service to have licensing deals with
all Hollywood majors two years later, following
a contract with NBC Universal.
Total investment in ivi.ru to date has not been revealed, but, according to previous reports, investment funds ru-Net and Tiger Global Management and Profmedia group injected $30mn in the project at the launch time, and Baring Vostok, which has made several highly successful
tech investments, added another $40mn in 2011. Last year, another $40mn came from a consortium led by the Russian Direct Investment Fund and United Arab Emirates-based Mubadala.
According to a study by TMT Consulting, published in early March, ivi.ru is responsible for 36% of Russia's online video service segment.
Strong growth
In 2019, Russian online video streaming segment grew by 50% to reach RUB17.1bn ($237.5mn), TMT Consulting's study says, adding that this year, it is likely to grow by another 40%, hitting the RUB24bn ($333mn) mark.
Meanwhile, the segment's business model has been evolving. When the first online video services were launched about 10 years ago, they relied heavily on advertising as the main source of revenue.
However, over the last couple of years, there has been a shift towards subscription revenue, and, last year, the subscription revenue accounted for 59% of the segment's total revenue, for the first time ever exceeding the advertisement revenue.
As the subscription model prevails over the ad model, growth in ad revenue in 2019 was more modest, at 13%, year-on-year, to RUB4.2bn ($58.3mn).
According to TMT Consulting, the main factors driving growth in the online video segment over