OPW - Nov 26 - Andrew Andreev founded Mamba, the most popular dating site in Russia with ~4.5M members. In 2005, Mamba was sold for $20M to Finam, a financial investment group. Most of Russian internet startups just copy foreign models. Mamba was unique, notes Nikita Sherman, ex-president of the company. Together with rare internet games it created demand for SMS payments. Having bought “Mamba” in 2005, Finam CEO didn’t regret. In 2009 its profit reached 664M rubles ($21M) with EBITDA 48%. The number of users increased to 12M. In 2007 Finam sold 30% of Mamba for $18M to Mail.ru, which was a part of internet holding DST of Yuriy Milner. Though Mamba never made it to the international dating market, Andreev launched another dating site called Badoo.com in 2006. Today Badoo has ~80M users. "Badoo competes with Plentyoffish, the leading free dating site in Europe," says dating market analyst Mark Brooks. In 2007 Finam” bought 10% stake in Badoo which valued the company at $300M. According to conservative estimates, annual revenue should pass $200M this year. FULL ARTICLE @ OPW
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