Just weeks after its launch on Jan. 10, an educational app named Znanija has broken into the top-100 downloaded free iOS apps in Russia and become third most popular in the nation’s educational category, according to the App Annie app ranking and intelligence company.
The mobile app allows Russian users to access the Znanija.com social educational network, which boasts over 780,000 users, according to Brainly.com, the Polish company behind the resource.
Brainly.com claims the app has already been downloaded over 22,000 times in different languages.
Brainly.com was founded in 2009 with the launch of Zadane.pl, which was soon followed by its Russian-language Znanija.com web site. Currently, it offers a further five localized web sites in German, Spanish, French, Turkish and Portuguese.
In September 2012, Brainly secured a $500,000 investment from German-based venture capital firm Point Nine Capital and other private investors. Brainly.com said at the time that the investment would allow it to develop mobile products and expand into new areas, including the English market.
Social educational networks, which allow people to exchange and share knowledge on a social networking platform, have been attracting increased interest in Russia from both users and investors alike.
Last September also saw the Dnevnik.ru educational platform receive a $5 million investment from international venture fund Runa Capital. Dnevnik.ru was established in 2007 and as of December its membership included more than 25,000 educational institutions and 5 million users across Russia, according to the service’s own figures.
In October, Fotoshkola.ru, an online training and community resource for would-be photographers, secured an investment from Bright Capital, a leading Russian venture fund.
