Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov last week announced the launch of Tinkoff Digital, an Internet company that will develop new technologies and products for the online and mobile advertising markets. Goldman Sachs will join Tinkov as a co-investor and shareholder in the business at an undisclosed share split.
Tinkov and Goldman Sachs will initially invest approximately $20 million to purchase and develop new technologies, to recruit an experienced management team and to market new products.
“Internet advertising has seen tremendous growth, and we want to monetize this unique opportunity,” said the new company’s CEO, Anna Znamenskaya, in an exchange with East-West Digital News.
The Russian online advertising market reached $1.4 billion in 2011, up 56% from 2010,– the fastest growth among all segments of the ad market. Znamenskaya expects the market to grow another 37% this year.
Tinkov started his business career in the late 1980s by speculating on hard-to-get consumer goods, as he recalls on his website. In the 1990s he operated in a variety of industries, from consumer electronics to the restaurant business to “pelmeni” (Russian ravioli). In the 2000s he opened two beer factories, which he sold to the Belgian company InBey before switching to the banking industry with his company Tinkoff Credit Systems, a fast-growing online bank.
A former CEO and co-founder of ivi.ru, a major online video portal, industry veteran Znamenskaya also served as Commercial Director at Rambler, a Russian Internet group, and is a founder of Workingmama.ru
