Insight Invests in B2B-Center, Russia’s Leading Online Procurement Marketplace

B2B-Center, Russia’s leading online procurement platform for businesses to sell or acquire goods and services, announced today that a consortium of investors led by Insight Venture Partners and Da Vinci Capital, and including ALPHA Associates and Runa Capital, has acquired a significant minority stake in the Company. The new investors join existing investors Mail.ru and the Company’s founder, Alexander Boyko.  The investment will be used to support the ongoing growth and expansion of B2B-Center into new vertical markets and new product types.

"B2B-Center is expected to grow at a significant rate triggered by technology improvements, the needs of businesses to improve efficiency and profitability, and open access to the Internet," said Oleg Jelezko, managing partner at Da Vinci. "We are proud to have brought to it a group of first-class international investors and it demonstrates the interest from global institutional investors in high quality Russian companies."

B2B-Center provides an online marketplace for both buyers and sellers of goods to negotiate and transact in a trusted environment. This includes all levels of complex procurement including competitive negotiation, requests for quotations, auctions and all types of government and private tenders. B2B-Center provides more than 30 types of trading procedures, leading to a sophisticated negotiating environment that comprehensively serves the needs of all parties to the transaction.

"This transaction is important for our company. We are the only open joint-stock Russian company in the field of electronic trading that includes foreign investors. This confirms our leading position in the industry, the growth of the company and the success of our chosen strategy", said founder and Chairman of B2B-Center, Alexander Boyko. "In addition, it is a unique deal for the Russian market in terms of the valuation and transaction structure.
 
Martin Angert, vice president at Insight Venture Partners commented further: "The Russian economy is evolving rapidly to transacting and doing business with greater transparency and speed. B2B-Center is at the forefront of this trend, led by its strong and visionary founder".

"B2B-Center is already the leading online procurement platform in Russia in terms of market share and transaction volume; the company will continue to add complementary services and products enabling improved buyer-seller collaboration and procurement efficiency for its users." said Richard Seewald, partner at ALPHA Associates.

"We are extremely excited to become a partner of B2B-Center. This Company effectively sets the gold standard for quality and transparency in the Russian online procurement market", said Serguei Beloussov, senior partner at Runa Capital. "We believe that this market presents a significant growth opportunity, and we will be happy to support the B2B-Center management team with our technology, operations and business development expertise."

About B2B-Center
B2B-Center (www.b2b-center.ru), is the largest operator of an online procurement marketplace in Russia. B2B-Center enables its business clients to list and sell, or find and procure, products and services, and thus extend sales channels for suppliers while improving efficiency in supply chain procurement. Daily trading volumes on B2B-Center are between USD $70-300 million with average transaction sizes of approximately USD $700,000. Today, more than 80% of the business sector’s electronic trading in Russia occurs with the help of B2B-Center and approximately 90,000 clients participate in the marketplace from nearly 80 countries.

About Da Vinci Capital
Da Vinci Capital is one of the leading independent private equity companies focusing on Russia and other CIS countries.  Da Vinci Capital has over $300 million under management and advisory services. The team has focused on leading and innovative medium size companies operating in financial services, IT and other sectors in Russia. Its recent exits include EPAM (IPO on NYSE) and MICEX-RTS merger. www.dvcap.com

About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a leading private equity and venture capital firm investing in software, eCommerce, internet and data-services companies. Founded in 1995, Insight has raised more than $5 billion and made more than 150 investments worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund and work successfully with visionary executives who are driving change in their industries. We provide them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. Insight invests globally from our headquarters in New York City, but invests globally. For more information, visit insightpartners.com

About ALPHA Associates
ALPHA Associates, based in Zurich, Switzerland, is an independent private equity fund manager and advisor with over $2 billion of assets under management. It builds and manages globally diversified private equity fund portfolios for institutional and private clients. ALPHA Associates is also the leading private equity fund-of-funds manager for Central and Eastern Europe. The team has invested more than EUR 400 million in more than 40 funds and direct investments in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia/CIS since 1998. ALPHA’s direct investment portfolio in CEE and Russia includes AVG Technologies (NYSE:AVG), EPAM Systems (NYSE: EPAM), Ozon, ElMarco and Multimedia Polska  www.alpha-associates.ch

About Runa Capital
Runa Capital is a technology-focused venture capital firm whose investments have created or incubated companies with over $10 billion USD in assets.  It was established to seek growth opportunities in the rapidly growing areas of the tech sector, with specific focus on cloud computing and other hosted services, virtualization and mobile applications. The key execution point is to select promising teams and drive and support them in the global marketplace, turning them into international champions. Runa Capital’s investments announced to date include: Nginx, OnAir3G/Telefir, Jelastic, Metabar, Travelmenu, BigTime® Software, Inc., ThinkGrid, Ecwid, Inc., Capptain. For more information, please visit www.runacap.com