Earlier this week Mail.Ru Group, a leading, LSE-listed Russian Internet group, and Rambler&Co, Russia’s fourth Internet group in terms of audience, announced the acquisition of Am.ru by Mail.Ru Group. The deal, an all-cash acquisition of $10 million, is expected to be closed imminently.
The Am.ru team, including its founder Oleg Golubtsov, will join Mail.Ru Group to develop the business further.
Am.ru is a relatively small player on the Russian car classifieds scene, with an audience of 517,000 unique users in March 2017 (1). However, the audience almost doubled in one year.
During the same month, Mail.Ru’s own car classifieds platform attracted nearly 7 million users, down from 8 million one year earlier (1).
“The auto classifieds segment is one of the largest digital markets displaying solid growth worldwide. The acquisition of Am.ru puts us in a favorable position to leverage our expertise and resources, get a good share of that market and bring Am.ru to even further success. Am.ru has substantial synergies with Youla [a general classifieds mobile app acquired last year by the group], and we are planning on fully integrating the two projects,” stated Dmitry Grishin, co-founder and Chairman of the Board of Mail.Ru Group, commenting on the acquisition.
Rambler&Co, which acquired Am.ru one and a half year ago, has exited with profit, said a representative to business daily Kommersant — without revealing, however, any further details.
“Selling Am.ru is an excellent example of Rambler&Co’s investment strategy, the essence of which is to invest in a wide range of early stage startups so that at some point they become attractive as acquisition targets. We invested in building a new team, actively marketed it both via and outside Rambler&Co’s resources, thus creating an attractive auto classifieds platform,” said Rambler&Co Executive Director Rafael Abramyan.
Way ahead of Am.ru, the three main players in the online car classifieds segment are Auto.ru, a property of Mail.Ru Group’s rival Yandex, Avito, the leading classifieds platform in Russia, and Drom.ru.
