Prominent Russian venture fund Almaz Capital Partners has provided a round of financing for Tallinn based online dating service Flirtic, the latter reported in a news release yesterday. The undisclosed amount will be used for the development of Flirtic in Russian and English speaking communities.
Launched at the beginning of 2011, Flirtic offers users an innovative online matchmaking service in which the website calculates the compatibility of a potential couple based on the results of simple and humerous psychological tests that each candidate for coupledom takes. Flirtic also uses social networking tools to retain its users. According to the website’s internal data, 30% of Flirtic users visit the site every day.
The company boasts a strong team of experienced founders and managers, including former MySpace VP April Henry, Estonian venture firm Martinson Trigon Venture Partners, former TweetDeck and Skype marketing specialist Nicola Riordan, angel investor Jaak Roosipuu, Cherry Media founder Andres Susi, as well as two founders of social networking firm Rate Solutions, Andrey Korobeynikov and Evgeny Pshenichnikov.
The Russian language Internet currently has two matchmaking services, Monamour.ru, launched in 2008, and Teamo.ru, launched last year by Fast Lane Ventures, a Western investment company specializing in Internet projects. Neither Match.com nor Meetic, the two Western dating and matchmaking giants, operate on the Russian market because of incompatible business models.
Almaz Capital Partners, informally called the Almaz-Cisco fund, is one of the best established venture funds in Russia. Almaz invested last month in TravelMenu.ru, a website offering a suite of travel products to Russian and Ukrainian Internet users. Earlier this month, it took part in a round of financing for AlterGeo.ru, a Russian startup inspired by the Foursquare concept. Almaz also has a stake in Yandex, the Russian search company that just began trading on Nasdaq. In January 2011, Almaz sold its stake in Qik, a developer of a mobile video file sharign application, to Skype.
