In a new illustration of the maintained interest of several Russian funds in Ukrainian startups, Imperious Group has invested $250,000 in Multitest, a Kiyv (Kiev) -based startup that helps Internet users choose their ISP. The funds will be used to redesign the platform and penetrate new markets.
The startup’s founder Artem Beloded is considering, in particular, the US, UK and Polish markets, he told Russian online publication Siliconrus.
Launched in 2012, Multitest compares more than 90 national and regional ISPs in Ukraine and Russia. It claims to have helped nearly 2 million users to optimize the choice of a provider serving their area. Multitest says its operations in Ukraine, its native market, are already profitable.
Earlier this year, Multitest already secured a capital injection of 480,000 hryvnias (a little more than $32,000 at the current exchange rate) from an undisclosed investor, notes AIN.UA.
Launched in 2010, Imperious Group has its capital – of an undisclosed amount – coming from real estate, said Pavel Aleshin, head of the fund’s expertise department, to East-West Digital News. The fund generally invests from $50,000 to $500,000 in startups at the pre-seed, seed and Series A stages. Its target markets encompass Russia and neighboring countries as well as Europe, Israel, Canada and the USA.
Since last year, Imperious has asserted itself as one of the most active investors on the Ukrainian startup scene – in which Aleshin sees “a young, but strong and fast-growing investment market.” The fund thus invested in e-commerce social platform Choos, P2P credit platform SimZirok (Seven Stars), hashtag marketing startup Hashtago, online drop shipping platform Bazilla as well as blogging platform Publicfast and social network Football4you.net.
Another Ukrainian portfolio company is Advice Wallet (Settle), in which Russian fund Life.SREDA injected $1.5 million this past summer – just one year after Imperious Group’s initial $300,000 investment.
Sources: Imperious Group, AIN.UA, Siliconrus.com, Forbes.UA
