In a new illustration of the invest-abroad trend among Russian investors, Target Ventures announced last month the opening of an office in San Francisco. The fund’s first US investment went to Prosper, a leading US peer-to-peer lending marketplace, which received $13 million, as reported by Russian tech blog Rusbase.
“The Russian market isn’t big enough,” the fund’s managing partner Mikhail Lobanov told Rusbase. The domestic mobile Internet market is limited — even though it grew very fast over the past few years, — and “there are very few potential acquirers for Russian startups,” he added.
To manage its activities in the USA, the Russian fund has appointed Andrey Kazakov, a young Russian startup entrepreneur and former General Partner at Foresight Ventures.
Later this summer Target Ventures intends to open another office in Germany — a country where it already invested several times. Thus in early 2014 the fund took part in Delivery Hero’s $88 million Series E round. In November, it led a €20 million round for international cruise booking portal Dreamlines.
The fund successfully exited from Fyber, a Berlin-based mobile ad solution publisher which was acquired by South Korea’s RTNS Media for $190 million in October 2014.
Target Ventures’ portfolio also includes Russian startups such as Eventbrite clone TimePad, online retailer Babadu.ru and online confectionary shop MixVille.ru.
Target Ventures was launched in 2013 for investment in the digital consumer space. Its backers are “private Russian individuals who wish to invest in [western markets] in order to diversify their investment portfolio,” said Lobanov in an exchange with East-West Digital News a few months ago.
None of these LPs are connected to Russian government circles, or targeted by the western sanctions, Lobanov told Rusbase.
