Russian private equity fund iTech Capital announced last week its investment in The Battle of Brands, a popular website launched in March of this year in both Russian and English languages. The amount of the capital injection was not disclosed, but an iTech representative told East-West Digital News the fund had obtained a majority stake in the company.
The Battle of Brands collects information about users’ preferences through play fights between different brands or types of products, such as sushi vs. pancakes or olive oil vs. sunflower oil, for example.
Created in just 24 hours on March 9, the site attracted more than 300,000 users in its first week and now attracts 700,000 users every month.
“The site’s success is partly due to the status of the site’s founder Andrey Glinsky as a participant in a popular Russian TV comedy show and active Internet networker,” iTech Capital PR Manager Victoria Gracheva commented in an exchange with EWDN.
The Battle of Brands site intends to monetize through targeted ads and paid battles organized on demand for brands.
The investment from iTech Capital will be used to offer a new, more social version of the website, and to prepare for its international expansion. “We will target the US market as a priority,” says Glinsky, who believes his concept is still waiting for the proper approach to realize its full potential.
On his personal website, Glinsky describes himself as “doing business and funny things on the Net.” Among his projects are Pink Godzilla, a digital creative agency, The Time Machine, a website selling “unusual things from the future,” and Roomix, a startup which helped consumers choose furniture using advanced 3D representations, but failed during the economic downturn of 2009.
Since its establishment in 2010, the Russian private equity fund iTech Capital has invested in Sotal, a developer of interactive and advertising apps for digital TV, Qiwi Post, a network of postal terminals, and Giftofoni, which developed a social app for the Turkish version of Facebook.
