Printio.ru, a Moscow-based startup offering personalized printing services, has just raised $700,000 from a total of 18 Russian and Western business angels. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but Printio’s co-founder Aleksandr Shamis told East-West Digital News that the founders got a “good valuation” and have kept a controlling stake.
Launched officially in July of this year, the company had raised $70,000 a few months before at a post-money valuation of $1 million, Shamis added.
Among the investors involved in the latest round are serial business angel Igor Ryabenky, Eruditor.ru founder and CEO Egor Rudi, Webinar.ru founders Alexander Alpern and Sergey Ivanov as well as Vladimir Sych, the founder of ABBYY Language Services, Anthony Capt of BauInvest, and the angel networks Venture Angels (Russia) and Apaxys Ventures (USA).
“From an administrative point of view, raising a [funding] round from so many different investors is somewhat of drag because of the time it takes to communicate with all of them,” Shamis conceded. “But we only raised money from like-minded entrepreneurs and investors, and our Cyprus-incorporated holding is extremely well organized, so I don’t expect any complications.”
These top-tier angels will be a great asset, the startup entrepreneur believes: “We wanted [to bring in] these particular people and actually had to limit their tickets to fill everyone in.”
Do-it-yourself design and 13,000 unique items
Printio provides a highly personalized printing service. Using a convenient online interface – an HTML 5 editor – customers can create their own design. These personalized texts and graphics can be printed on a wide range of media, from t-shirts to souvenirs, in addition to business cards and other traditional print production such as leaflets, catalogs, and books.
The printed items are either shipped to their creators or made available for sale in Printio’s online catalog, which already features more than 13,000 unique items.
The Russian startup and its investors claim that no other on-demand printing technology in the world matches Printio. “Our technology is so advanced that we regularly receive partnership offers from printing companies from all over world, including the US, Britain, Germany, Singapore, and others. In fact, we might launch in Ukraine as early as spring of next year,” Shamis told EWDN.
Shamis is also a co-founder of Foodik.ru, a startup that recently merged with online food delivery giant Delivero.
- RUSSIAN E-COMMERCE REPORT 2012 – The total volume of Russian online retail reached 310 billion rubles, a little more than $10 billion, in 2011, up 25% at least from the previous year. EWDN has published an in-depth research on Russian e-commerce. To receive free insights or to order the full version, please contact us at [email protected].