Mail.Ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant, is investing is Skillbox, an e-learning platform for digital and IT specialties. The transaction was revealed yesterday by business daily Vedomosti, based on exchanges with representatives of both companies.
The group has acquired a 3.6% stake for an undisclosed amount as part of a plan to ultimately acquire 10%.
Launched in 2016, Skillbox claims to have generated some 350 million rubles (nearly $5 million) in revenues in 2017.
Mail.Ru Group – which acquired a stake in GeekBrains, an online learning platform for developers, in 2016 – considers such investments to have both a social and a business dimension.
The Russian online education market is still embryonic. It amounted to some 20 billion rubles (around $300 million) in 2016, according to a study released with participation from East-West Digital News. It could exceed 50 billion rubles in 2021 (around $770 million at the current exchange rate).
Among the major investors in this field are PE firm Baring Vostok, which invested in online education platform Skyeng in early 2018, Alexey Mordashov’s Severgroup, which created the TalentTech group of companies after acquiring Netology in 2017, and the state-owned fund of funds RVC, which announced recently the launch of a $100 million edtech fund.
Featured image by Freepik
