Bonusway, a company which operates cash-back platforms in Finland, Russia, Sweden and Turkey, has received a capital injection of €3.7 million from Buran Venture Capital, a VC firm with Russian and Hungarian roots, and Finnish fund Vision Plus.
A €3.2 million bank loan has been provided by Nordea and Finnvera as an additional part of the package. No further details of these transactions have been disclosed.
The major part of these funds will go to Kopikot.ru, the Russian branch of the company, Bonusway’s CEO Tatu Koistinen told East-West Digital News.
The Bonusway sites pay their members a percentage of money earned when they purchase goods and services via affiliate e-commerce sites. Kopikot, which offers its users 5% on average, accounts for nearly 40% of Bonusway’s revenues, reported Russian business daily Kommersant, citing an exchange with Buran Venture Capital
The Russian site aims to attract 10 million consumers during the next two years, Koistinen said.
More than 30 million Russians make online purchases, and this number is growing fast, according to an industry report by East-West Digital News.
Little known loyalty
“The Russian e-commerce market is currently at a very interesting stage, with Chinese players playing a growing role,” he commented, referring to the fact that deliveries from China account for more than 80% of the cross-border segment.
Kopikot does cooperate with such cross-border sales leaders as AliExpress (China) and ASOS (UK) as well as with Booking.com and domestic sites Kupivip.ru, Lamoda.ru, Ozon.ru, Sportmaster.ru, Svyaznoi.ru.
However, “95% of people [in Russia] don’t know that online loyalty exists,” according to Koistinen, who aims to “increase the share of loyalty in merchants’ marketing budgets.”
As for further plans, Koistinen intends to open cash back platforms “in three or four new countries each year.”
The main focus, however, is “to go very deep in the current countries.” “We aim to be the prefered marketing partner for e-commerce countries and the prefered destination for consumers looking for shopping inspiration.”
Based in Helsinki, Bonusway claims to be the number one in its field in Northern and Eastern Europe, serving currently more than 1,500,000 users and 3,500 e-commerce partners worldwide. In November 2014, the company already attracted €1.5 million from Vision Plus, according to CrunchBase.
