YouAppi, a San Francisco-based startup that has developed a Big Data-driven solution for mobile marketing, has raised $13.1 million from an international consortium of investors, including AltaIR, Emery Capital and Flint Capital, three funds with Russian roots.
Also participating in this Series B round are Click Ventures, Digital Venture (Ukraine), Global Brain (Japan) and Hawk Ventures (USA) as well as Israeli funds Glilot Capital Partners and 2B Angels.
Flint, Glilot and 2B Angels had already put $3 million in YouAppi’s Series A round in October 2014.
The funding will be used to enhance YouAppi’s products and accelerate growth in China, Japan and other growth markets, while moving the company’s headquarters to San Francisco.
Initially based between Israel and New York, the startup also has offices in Beijing, Berlin and London.
Launched in 2012, YouAppi “enables the world’s leading apps to find the right customers at the right conversion price across countries and verticals, based on post-install event analytics.” Its proprietary predictive algorithms can “analyze the usage habits of 1.5 billion users of 3,500 mobile apps and sites.” These include The New York Times, Pandora, EA, Orbitz, Zynga, Yandex, Wayfair, and Viber in 200 countries via 100 billion impressions monthly, the startup claims.
In Asia, YouAppi works with Baidu, UC Union (Alibaba Mobile Business Group), Sungy Mobile, Apus, NewBornTown, Kika and Bandai Namco, as well as global YouAppi clients. The company expects its Chinese revenue to double in 2016 from 10% to 20% of its global revenue.
“The YouAppi technology has an impressive ability to hit the ground running and deliver strong user acquisition numbers for native Chinese apps at or below the price point set by the app’s marketing team. Most foreign companies have a steep learning curve in China, but YouAppi succeeded immediately upon launching their first few native Chinese apps,” said Jin Shanghao, Venture Partner at Hawk Ventures.
Moscow-based Emery Capital usually invests from $300k to $700k in startups from Israel, US, Western and Eastern Europe — including such Russian startups as 3D modelling app maker GeoCV .
Launched in 2013 with an initial focus on Russia, Flint Capital exemplifies the new generation of Russian funds that have shifted to a more global perspective as the domestic market conditions were deteriorating over the past two years. The fund began investing in Israel in 2014.
Lauched by Russian serial startup investor Igor Ryabenkiy, AltaIR Capital invests in early stage tech companies, primarily in the areas of Internet and mobile essentially in Russia, Israel and the USA. In October 2015, Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich contributed $10 million to the fund.
Israel is a popular destination among Russian investors who seek international opportunities. Among the other Russia-connected players having invested in this country are Maxfield Capital, Mail.ru Group, Titanium Investments, Yandex, in addition to Russian billionaires Roman Abramovich and Vyacheslav Mirilashvili with his fund Vaizra.
