Mail.ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant, is launching its Disk-O virtual disk client on the international market.
A source in the group told Kommersant, a major business daily, that the company expects to attract one million users in the first year of international operations. Targeted countries include China, France, Germany, India, Spain, Turkey, the UK and the United States. Advertising campaigns already started in these countries.
Mail.ru Group does not say how much it has invested in this international expansion, but industry observers believe the spending might have been no less than $10 million.
Unlike a typical FTP client, Disk-O allows its users to open and edit server-based files without the additional step of downloading the file. Disk-O lets its users map a drive or mount a device to access popular cloud services such as Mail.ru Cloud and Yandex.Disk in Russia or international services like Dropbox, Google Drive, Webdav and Box.
Launched in 2017, Disk-O can work on both PCs and Macs, letting its users work with files in any programs they choose, even in an offline mode. The service claims working via its client is twice as fast as working through a browser.
Among Disk-O competitors abroad, the company mentions Expondrive, NetDrive and WebDrive.
