Russian software house secures $200m from Baring Vostok Capital

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Monday, October 3rd, 2011

You may not have heard of 1C.ru, but this leading Russian software company publishes 1C:Enterprise, the most popular ERP software for small and medium-sized businesses in Russia. With such a lock on a large market, that means 1C reported sales turnover of more than $600 million in 2010. And the sales are expected to increase by 20% in 2011.

So it’s not entirely unsurprising that the company has now received $200 million in return for a 9% stake from private equity firm Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) reports newspaper Vedomosti.

1C develops, distributes and publishes mass-market software and was founded in 1991. BVCP has previously invested in broadband telecom operator ER-Telecom but is better known for its stake in Yandex and OZON.ru.

The move should be seen as a wider move by VCs to invest in Russian software powerhouses. This January saw General Atlantic invest $200 million in security software vendor Kaspersky Lab.