Last month the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) invested 60 million rubles ($950,000 at the current exchange rate) in Metacommerce, a Moscow-based startup which has developed an e-commerce analytics platform. FRII was the sole investor in this round, but the startup had previously secured mentoring and financial support from Igor Ashmanov, a prominent figure of the Russian IT scene.
Metacommerce’s SaaS platform collects and analyzes every day “more than 50 million data about prices, assortments, product availability and marketing actions from thousands of websites across the world,” the company claims.
The startup thus allows its clients — companies running e-commerce sites as well as brands and manufacturers — to monitor prices, assortment and other information from the market and their competitors. The Metacommerce solution also allows e-commerce sites to automate repricing and assortment changes based on this monitoring.
The global market of competitive monitoring reaches some $7 billion per year, including some $30 million for Russia, according to FRII data cited by Russian tech news site CNews.ru.
FRII was created in 2013 following a government initiative to invest in online projects at the early stages. The fund’s capital amounts to 6 billion rubles, which equalled to some $200 million at the moment of launch, but to just $85 million today as a result of the ruble’s depreciation.
Each year the fund invests small amounts (2.1 million rubles or some $33,000) at the pre-seed stage in 80 to 90 startups in the framework of an acceleration program. At later stages, FRII may invest more significant amounts — up to 324 million rubles ($5 million), Dania Shumilkina, Head of Communication Projects, told East-West Digital News.
So far FRII has invested in more than 245 companies. Among the largest deals so far have been a $2.9 million investment in Babadu, an online retailer of children’s goods, and a $3 million investment in Knopka Zhizhni, an emergency button for elderly people.
