International investor Black Ocean has put $500,000 into the Russian educational e-commerce site BimBasket, Rusbase.com reported last week. Scheduled for launch next month, the site will enable parents to subscribe to a recurring product offer – from toys to books to musical instruments – designed to instruct and entertain their infants and young children.
The concept of recurring offers for children already exists in the US, as exemplified by Babbaco.com and Citruslane.com. But BimBasket is apparently the first site to test the idea in Russia.
The Russian startup says it has combined these US models with a unique Russian educational method. Its founding team includes Prof. Mikhail Lazarev, a member of the Russian Academy of Pedagogical and Social Sciences and the head of its post- and prenatal children’s health department.
The program has also been approved by the Scientific Center for Children’s Health and the Ministry of Health of Russia, BimBasket claims.
“When we found the project – through the Rusbase startup database – it consisted only of a rough concept. The existing team was unlikely to be able to monetize Prof. Lazarev’s great ideas,” said Black Ocean’s CEO Roman Gorovoy in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
To lead the project, Gorovoy has enrolled one of his most experienced partners, Denis Ryabchenkov.
In exchange for its $500,000 investment, Black Ocean will get a stake of no less than 80% in the startup, Gorovoy told EWDN. “Such a high percentage is unusual,” he admitted, but “we will actively manage the project.”
Black Ocean is a New York-headquartered holding that builds, operates and invests in technology businesses around the world, focusing on video, social-media, mobile and e-commerce. Its first Russian investment was in Rusbase, an English-language online database and news source dedicated to startups and investors operating in Russia.
