Almaz Capital invests $1.2M in Pruffi recruiting service

Venture fund Almaz Capital Partners invested $1.2M in the first Russian social recruiting service Pruffi. The founder of service Alena Vladimirskaya told the media about it. The fund received a 30% stake for the investment, a source close to one of the parties reported to Vedomosti. Therefore, the total cost of Pruffi is $4M.

According to Alena Vladimirskaya, the investment will be primarily spent on the development of the recruiting platform through social networks of Pruffi Friends in Russia, USA, CIS countries and Europe. Pruffi already has partners in Uzbekistan and Ukraine. Pruffi Friends is a dynamically developing platform that has already proved its worth, we are pleased to work with Pruffi and will maximize our resources to help the company to go international, the managing partner of the fund Alexander Galitsky says.

The specialization of recruiter Pruffi is recruitment through social networks and a recommendation system. It was founded in 2011 by Alena Vladimirskaya, who headed the direction of working with talents in Mail.ru Group. About 300K people use Pruffi Friends app, 3.5K people post over 15K recommendations weekly. Pruffi present in social networks Facebook, Vkontakte, and will start working in Odnoklassniki in September. Pruffi Friends’ monthly turnover is 1,5-3M RUR, depending on the season.

The feature of the company is that Pruffi does not take money from employers for jobs posting, but takes only for the closure of posts, saving employers to pay up front with no result guaranteed. Since the launch of the service, it has closed more than 300 vacancies. According to Vladimirskaya, Russia does not have a similar recruitment service specializing in finding candidates in social networks.