Moscow-Based Venture Fund Ru-Net to Invest USD50m in SEA Market
I had the privilege to have a chat with Alexander Pavlov, Investment Director for Moscow-Based Venture Fund Ru-Net, on the sidelines of our Startup Asia event. We chatted about Ru-Net’s plans to invest $50 million is the Southeast Asia (SEA) region.
In a nutshell, Ru-Net is a Russian-based fund focused on investing in Internet and Information Technology (IT) industries. Some of the more successful companies that they have invested in include OZON.ru (often dubbed the “Amazon of Russia”), BigLion (Russia’s largest daily deals site) and ivi (an online video site). They also have a completely different fund focused mainly on investing in technology firms in the US, called RTP Ventures.
At present, Ru-Net has $700 million in their fund and is planning to invest $50 million in the SEA market in the next two to three years, depending on the quality of the startups they are able to find. They have already invested in a Vietnamese e-commerce platform called MJ Group and are looking at investing in India next.
Ru-Net hopes to invest around 5 to 20 million dollars in a single transaction, preferably in the areas of e-commerce, online travel, online entertainment, and social gaming, and preferably in startups who have already received some amount of seed funding.
Ru-Netは、できればeコマースかソーシャルゲームの分野で、一件当たり500万ドルから2000万ドル程度を投資することができればよいと考えている。投資先としては、できればすでにいずれかからの初期投資を受けている企業が好ましいとしている。
Ru-Netは、1度の投資ラウンドで500万から2000万ドルの資金投入を希望しており、出来ればEコマース、オンライントラベル、オンラインエンターテイメント、そしてソーシャルゲーミングをターゲットにしたいと考えており、加えてシードラウンドの資金調達を既に受けているスタートアップ企業であればより望ましいとしている。
They do not have offices in SEA at the moment though, despite having plans to enter the SEA. I thought that wasn’t exactly wise, but Alex later shared that they do have local partners in SEA. They have invested in Digital Media Partners (DMP) and are currently on board as their limited partner. After all, local partners understand the local markets, have the right connections and comprehend the consumption patterns better than foreign investors.
When asked about Alex’s thoughts on the Startup Arena pitches in Startup Asia, he was pretty excited about the untapped potential in the e-commerce market. In his opinion, there is still room for e-commerce and reveals that they are on the search for people who are able to execute and build companies which are scalable and replicable in different markets.
Previously, RedMart did reveal that the non-perishable goods market generates about $4.2 billion annually in Singapore, so there are definitely areas within the e-commerce industry where startups could possibly explore.
以前にRedMarｔは日持ちのする商品の市場がシンガポールで年間42億ドル規模に達するという事実を明らかにしたが、つまり新興企業が参入することのできるeコマース産業の大きな領域が確かに存在するということである。
RedMartは以前、非生鮮商品市場はシンガポールで年間およそ42億ドルを生み出している市場だということを明らかにした。よって、Eコマース産業内でスタートアップ企業が探るべき分野は確実に存在するはずなのである。
