VimpelCom Communications has acquired a stake in startup Restik, which offers a suite of cloud services for restaurants and cafes. Experts believe that this agreement reflects VimpelCom’s intentions to keep up with its competitors in developing its own ecosystem.
At the end of 2022, Restik’s revenue remained at 14.6 rubles, down from 2.1 million a year earlier. Net loss: 2.7 million, in 2021 the loss amounted to almost 4.6 million.
According to Kontur.Focus, Hive LLC (100% owned by VimpelCom-Communications) owns 10% of Restik LLC as of November 8. Today, the founders of the project, Oleg Suzhaev and Kirill Gusev, hold 26% and 23.7% respectively. Another 13% now belongs to Sergei Solonin. Edgar Klimov and Alexey Shestakov also have 8.6% each. Viktor Khristenko owns 4.2%, Andrey Danilov – 4%. And another 1% stays with Alexander Taran.
The service declined to comment on the deal. However, in the spring of this year, a Restik representative spoke to RB.RU about attracting 30 million investments from “a major player in the telecommunications market.”
Experts interviewed by RB.RU believe that the agreement could serve VimpelCom’s intentions to catch up with its competitors in developing its own ecosystem. Market participants and analysts point out that in the medium term it will be increasingly difficult to make money from telecommunications services, which is why big players are trying to diversify their income.
Infoline CEO Ivan Fedyakov recalled the MTS startup study, which, according to analysts, is more advanced. And VimpelCom has probably decided to start catching up with its competitor.
“It’s like a gas station. In the United States and other countries, money is not made from the sale of fuel, in the future we will need to have a related business,” Fedyakov explained.
Kliment Kuzmin, general director of the digital solutions development studio for companies OASIS App and the startup academy Products School, agrees with this assessment. He recalled that MTS, in addition to communication services, develops a series of products in various segments. For example, the Kion online cinema or the MTS Travel hotel reservation service. MTS Bank ensures the company’s presence in the fintech market.
“According to the results of a study of the Russian market ecosystems carried out by J’son & Partners Consulting, VimpelCom did not reach the top b2c ecosystems in the country and I believe that with the agreement with Restik it wants to increase its presence. in the markets to be able to somehow catch up with their competitors,” says the expert.
VimpelCom-Communications registered Hive LLC in 2022. In addition to Restik, the company’s portfolio includes shares of several other projects. For example, on November 7, 2023, the organization received 12% in Theories from Practitioners LLC. This is the legal entity of the LXP Kampus corporate training platform. Another 15% of “Hive” is owned by the online children’s school “Novator School”.
VimpelCom had no comment on the deal. According to Vladimir Chernov, an analyst at Freedom Finance Global, the operation could have been carried out either in cash or with a Rostelecom share.
“The deal was probably done in cash, since at the end of the third quarter of 2023, Rostelecom’s free cash flow increased 1.8 times in annual terms, up to 10.6 billion rubles,” Chernov said, adding that 10% of this stake in Restik could cost 5-15 million rubles.
The co-founder of the analytical platform Dsight, Arseniy Dabbakh, for his part, admits that in the future VimpelCom will not limit itself to 10% and will buy the entire service. According to the expert, the company has probably tested the service on some clients and can consolidate Restik if it scales successfully.
“Currently the company’s valuation is less than 250 million rubles, but the final price will become clear after large-scale integration and can grow several times,” Dabbagh concluded.
Restik was founded in 2018, the company offers establishments a set of services and tools to do business. The company’s products help automate a number of processes, from order receipt to sales statistics. Restik also developed an electronic QR menu.
In 2020, the founder of the Russian restaurant festival and project “SysoevFM”, Alexander Sysoev, invested in Restik. Also the co-founder of Qiwi Sergey Solonin and the general director of SberZvuk Business (now Zvuk Business) Viktor Khristenko became investors in the project.
Author:
Natalia Gormaleva
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
