Oktogo renamed in Travel.ru and attracted $5M

Resident of the “Skolkovo” the Company “Oktogo”, in which enter homonymous service of online-booking of hotels and touristic portal “Travel.ru”, announced about rename in “Travel.ru” in the new round of investments. The Fund “VEB Innovations”, which supports “Skolkovo” projects, invested in the company $5M. Attracted funds will be directed to the brand “Travel.ru” development in Russia, which is said in the company’s message.

The touristic portal “Travel.ru” has been acquired by the company “Octogo” in September, 2013. By the present day is updated the main page of the portal, started updates of services, implemented opportunity of online-booking of hotels all over the world. The cumulative audience of “Oktogo” and “Travel.ru” comprises about 3 million users per month. The basis of the service includes 350 thousand all over the world.

“Our aim is to make “Travel.ru” to be a brand number one at the touristic market of Russia”, - stated director general of the Travel.ru (Oktogo) Marina Kolesnik. According to her, the “Skolkovo” Fund influenced a new investor attraction for Travel.ru/Oktogo. “With the help of new investments we plan to make Travel.ru into a place, where any can plan and book its trip abroad and around Russia”, - noted Marina Kolesnik.

Marina Kolesnik has also noted that competitiveness in the sphere of online-booking in Russian segment of Internet is very high. Herewith founder of Oktogo believes that history of Travel.ru is able to become “the success history, which are in need for Russian Internet market”.

According to estimation of the research agency “PhoCusWright”, Russian market of online-trips grows up to 50% per year, and its amount this year will reach $10B. According to initial estimations of Oktogo, the amount of one of the segments of this market – Internet-booking of hotels – by 2015 will exceed $3M.

Earning of Oktogo has been built by the model of commission for booking; with acquisition of the Travel.ru it added earnings from advertisement distribution.

The service of online-booking Oktogo was founded by Marina Kolesnik in 2009. Taking into consideration the latest financing round, total amount of attracted by the company investments comprises about $30M. Initially Oktogo attracted financing from Funds “Mangrove Capital Partners”, “ABRT Venture Fund”, “Ventech”, “VTB Capital”, “Victor Sazhin Group” and private investors.

The Fund “VEB Innovations” was founded by Vnesheconombank in the end of 2011for investments in high-technology projects of the “Skolkovo” Funds. The portfolio of “VEB-Innovations” at the moment include companies “Anturis”, “Datadvans”, “GlobalLab”, “Technologies Geoscan”, “Spectrlaser”, and others.