RITF invests $5m in LitRes

RITF was established at the beginning of the year by BRV and Third Rome Group, a Russian advisory and investment firm. It is a $50m fund created specifically to invest in companies operating in the internet and information technology sectors, focusing predominantly on Russian companies but also considering companies that identify Russia as a key market for their product.

The fund provides $1-5m in capital and plans to make 12-15 investments over its lifespan. Including this investment in LitRes, the fund has deployed $10m in capital so far.

The financing from the series-A round will allow LitRes to expand its promotion and marketing operations, as well as increase its product base of e-books and invest in its customer services.

According to Third Rome, the Russian e-book market is rapidly strengthening, with sales of e-books increasing ten-fold in the last three years. It states that RITF's investment in LitRes will allow the company to compete against a number of leaders in the area that are planning on entering the Russian e-book market in the near future.

The Russian language e-book market is expected to reach RUB 500m this year, according to LitRes. The company also states that e-books are expected to reach 5% of the country's book market at some point in 2015-2017, equivalent to RUB 3bn.

Company
Founded in 2006, LitRes is headquartered in Moscow and employs six staff. The company operates an online retail outlet for Russian e-books and audio books, currently offering more than 380,000 products. Alongside its website, LitRes operates a mobile application for iOS, Android and the Windows 8 phone, as well as Samsung Smart TV.

The company has partnerships with Russian publishers, such as Eksmo, Azbuka-Atticus and Ripol-Klassic, as well as Russian authors.

People
Sergey Anuriev is the CEO of LitRes. Evgeny Kaltashev is a managing partner at BRV. Andrei Movchan is a managing partner at Third Rome, while Maxim Yanpolsky is a partner.

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• Topics
• CEE
• Expansion
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• Russia