Russian programmer and businessman Valery Gasratov launched social gifting application Giftofoni last week, allowing Turkish speaking Facebook users to order gifts and organize parties.
The application is derived from Welcome Gifts, Zhelannye Podarki in Russian, an application launched last year by Gasratov’s team on Odnoklassniki.ru, a leading Russian social networking site. Welcome Gifts was used by 12 million users during the first three months and has remained a top social app in Russia up to now.
Gasratov has ambitions to expand Giftoni through Facebook beyond Turkey. The launch in Turkey among 30 million Facebook users, however, represents a healthy starting point, Russian business daily Vedomosti quoted Gasratov as saying. The US social network is particularly popular in Istanbul, which stands as the second city in the world according to the number of users on the Facebook world map.
Less than $1 million has been invested in the project, which Gasratov compared to the $20 million spent on Gift Projects, a social gifting platform acquired by eBay earlier this month.
Last spring, Giftofini received investment from iTech Capital, a Russian high tech private equity fund established in 2010, in exchange for a 50% stake in the company. “Valery’s first application on Odnoklassniki has shown extraordinary potential as a well-designed, hyperviral social commerce application,” iTech Capital Investment manager Nikolai Davydov told East-West Digital News. “This is why we invested in the Giftofoni project and are confident in its further international success.”
Earlier this month, Yandex announced the launch of a Turkish version of its Yandex search engine, the first national specific version outside Russian speaking geography.
