USM Holdings, a company controlled by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, is about to invest 500 million rubles (approximately $8 million at the current exchange rate) in tax data operator OFD.RU. The news was reported earlier this month by business daily Kommersant, based on exchanges with representatives of both companies.
The funding will be spent on further technological development, improvements of data security, and marketing operations, said OFD.RU’s director Nikolai Zhmurenko.
The startup has been authorized by the Russian tax service to operate tax data. It will generate revenues by passing electronic data from online cash registers to tax authorities. The startup intends to benefit from a recent law which came into force in June this year. According to this law, all users of cash register equipment will be required to use online cash registers and pass tax data to tax authorities through fiscal data operators starting from July 1, 2017.
These requirements apply to retail outlets, online stores, cafes, restaurants, hotels, beauty salons, pharmacies, gas stations, car services, law firms and other service providers. In a further stage, the legislation will apply to cash-in kiosks (payment terminals) and vending machines.
“A logical step for USM”
According to OFD.RU, there are nearly 2.5 million cash registers officially registered in Russia, with only 1.2 million of them actually functioning. The number of cash registers could reach 3 million after the new law comes into force.
The size of the tax data market will exceed 1.5 billion rubles (roughly $24 million at the current exchange rate) in 2017, while by 2019 it is expected to reach 9 billion rubles (roughly $144 million at the current exchange rate). OFD.RU intends to occupy 20% of the market.
This investment “is a logical step for USM Holdings, which already has stakes in a number of mobile operators [in particular, MegaFon], as well as in IT companies [in particular, Mail.ru Group], which specialize in both billing and big data,” said Mikhail Dubin, managing director of IT projects management and development at USM Advisors.
OFD is a spin-off of Peter-Servis, a Russian developer of billing systems and software for the telecommunications industry, which is a part of USM.
Among its competitors are Evotor (which is affiliated to Sberbank), Energy systems and communications, Taxcom and Yarus. Dozens of other companies are expected to enter this market.
Source: Kommersant
