On Friday last week eToro, which presents itself as the world’s largest social investment network for traders, announced its official launch in Russia with fully localized features and support. Pavel Salas, a former executive at Alfa Forex (Alfa-Bank), GKFX and Alpari, has been appointed as head of the Russian office.
The company’s stated mission is to “revolutionize the way people interact on the financial markets, making the trading experience more sociable, simple, welcoming and transparent.” It claims 4.5 million registered users in over 140 countries and thousands of new accounts opened each day.
Not only can eToro’s users place market orders, manage their portfolios, open and close positions. The platform’s community-powered network enables every investor to see, follow and automatically copy the actions of other investors in real time.
“More successful trades occur 11% more often in social trading platforms,” the company states, referring to an MIT research.
Founded in 2007 by Israeli brothers Yoni and Ronen Assia, eToro has grown into an international well established company with more than 200 employees in offices in Israel, UK, Cyprus and now Russia. Many of its members are from the UK, Germany, France and Italy.
SBT Venture Capital, the venture arm of Russia’s national savings bank Sberbank, invested an undisclosed amount in eToro in November last year. The round saw eToro also attract investment from Spark Capital and BRM Group, as well as credit from the Silicon Valley Bank.
Since its inception, the Cyprus-based company has raised $60 million in total.
