Page 97 - RusRPTJuly18

MegaFon is expected to receive $247.5mn in total and does not plan to sell the remaining 10% in Mail.Ru Group. The new joint venture plans to develop banking products and a financial online platform, potentially competing with Russian state behemoth Sberbank that has ambitious digitally driven strategy.
London-based oligarch Roman Abramovich will have to cut his 24% stake in Russia's main TV channel, the First Channel , after becoming an Israeli citizen this month, RBC daily said on June 24 citing the telecom watchdog Roskomdazor. Amid increased tensions with the West since 2014, Russia has capped foreign ownership in media outlets at 20% , which reshaped the domestic media landscape.
Russian internet major Mail.Ru Group and taxi-aggregator Vezyot have concluded a convertible loan agreement in preparation for a new investment round, the company said on June 24 without disclosing the terms and the amount of the investment round. Mail.Ru Group will have the right to convert the loan into ordinary shares of Vezyot. "Vezyot is not Mail.Ru Group's first investment into the fast-growing taxi market," Aton Equity said citing the RBC business daily estimating that the online taxi market could exceed RUB1tn ($16bn) in 2022. Earlier in 2018 Mail.Ru Group along with MegaFon mobile major invested in taxi-aggregator CityMobil, with Mail.ru purchasing 26% for $12mn.
Mobile operator Megafon is getting ready to sell its tower business, the company said on June 21. Megafon has restructured its business and placed the towers into a holding, the First Tower Company, according to CFO Alexander Barunin, TASS reports.
Online taxi booking service Gett said it raised another $80mn for operations in Russia from Access Industries of Leonid Blavatnik, Baring Vostok, MCI, and Volkswagen Group among the investors. The company said on June 7 the service is valued at $1.4bn. Previously at the end of 2016 Gett raised $100mn in venture financing from Russia's largest bank Sberbank to start the expansion in Russian cities with a population of more than 1mn.
The number of active paid and trial subscriptions to Russia’s Mail.ru group music service reached 1.5mn , representatives of the company told Vedomosti d aily on June 18. Mail.ru launched a new paid subscription for streaming music on social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki in April 2017, as well as mobile app Boom, cutting the free listening mode on all services to thirty minutes. United Media Agency is managing the licensing of the content on Mail.ru behalf. However, it is unlikely that streaming is a high-margin business for Mail.ru, as sources in the music industry told Vedomosti t hat most of the revenues are paid in royalties to copyright holders.
China's e-commerce business AliExpress will launch parcel drop-off points in 100 Russian cities as of June 19, Kommersant d aily said citing the representatives of the company. The investment in the service comes amid discussions of taxing cross-border online purchases in Russia to make domestic players more competitive on largely foreign-dominated e-commerce market . Logistical partner of Chinese marketplace in opening over 2,000 pick-up zones in Russia is Dynamic Parcel Distribution (DPD). Online shoppers will be able to collect their deliveries in PickPoint outlets, Qiwi and Pulse Express locker boxes, as well as in retail points of Rostelecom and Tele2. The service is expected to cut the delivery time of the parcels two-fold to 8-15 days from the moment of online purchase.
RUSSIA Country Report July 2018 www.intellinews.com