GdeMaterial, Russian DIY marketplace, has attracted $500,000 from Niels Tonsen, Burkhard Binder and Dominik Picker, co-founders of fashion retailer Lamoda.ru, as well as from Vadim Fedotov, ex-CEO of Groupon Russia and Gazprom-Media Technologies. The news was reported earlier this weeek by Russian business daily Kommersant.
Other investors included Impulse VC, a venture fund which is reportedly affiliated to Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich, and Eugene Timko, managing partner at Russian venture fund Xploration Capital. Impulse VC had already taken part in the company’s previous round of 10 million rubles ($162,000 at the current exchange rate) in late 2016.
The funding will be used to fuel marketing, product development, automation and the expansion of the offered assortment, says the company.
GdeMaterial partners with 224 suppliers and manages the fleet of 246 trucks. The marketplace generates revenues from commission fees (5-10%, depending on the product and seasonality). These revenues already amount to some 30 million rubles (a little more than $480,000 at the current exchange rate) monthly, according to the company.
The Russian DIY market amounted to 1.4 trillion rubles (around $22 billion) in 2017, according to Infoline Analitica. Meanwhile, according to the Russian Association of Internet Trade Companies (AITC), the DIY segment in the Russian e-commerce reached 95 billion rubles (roughly $1.5 billion) in 2017, showing a 40% growth compared to 2016 and being the fastest growing e-commerce segment in the country.
Source: Kommersant
