Runa Capital invests $2m in Rocketbank

The capital injection will be used by Rocketbank to further expand its services in Russia. The company will also use the funds to finance product development and the scaling of operations.

Rocketbank CEO Victor Lysenko said in a statement that the company had been in talks with several venture capital firms, but chose to partner with Runa due to the firm's efficiency.

Runa invested in the company via its Runa Capital Venture Fund vehicle, a $135m fund focused on making investments in young technology companies, predominantly those operating in Russia. The fund tends to invest in companies operating in the mobile application, virtualisation, cloud computing and other hosted services markets.

Previous funding
Rocketbank's founders, Victor Lysenko and Oleg Kozyrev, are believed to have injected $200,000 into the business to get it off the ground.

Company
Founded in 2012, Rocketbank is headquartered in Moscow and currently employs 12 staff. The company provides an iPhone mobile banking service, which is currently available only in Russia. Clients of the service pay a fixed fee of RUB 290 (approximately $9) per month and receive a platinum Visa debit card and iPhone app.

Rocketbank's banking services include free worldwide ATM cash withdrawals, an air-miles programme, expenditure analysis, and transfers. Through the app, a user can also perform a transfer without needing to enter the banking details of the recipient. Instead, a user can select the recipient from their iPhone's address book to complete a transfer.

Rocketbank also forgoes the fees that are typically implemented by traditional banks, such as charges for instant transfers between cards. Instead, users pay the monthly subscription fee for Rocketbank's services.

Rocketbank's services are currently used by several thousand users, the company claims. It hopes to amass tens of thousands of users in 2014.

People
Lysenko, the former CEO and co-founder of Groupon Russia, is the CEO of Rocketbank and co-founded the business alongside Oleg Kozyrev. Ilya Zubarev is a senior partner at Runa.

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• Topics
• CEE
• Financials
• Expansion
• Russia