The founder of the IT startup “Biorg” has recovered 70% of the company and is waiting for an investor

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, Zuev received 20% from Mikhail Gorbunov and 10% each from Ilya Verigin, Daria Giancotti, Anton Kolosov, Anna Savelyeva and Alexey Statsenko. Alexander Novikov remains a co-owner and owns 10% of the company. All shares were pledged to Zuev.

The six former co-owners and Novikov, who kept the shares, were key employees of Biorg when they bought the shares from Zuev in January 2023, who was going to focus on other technological projects, RB.RU writes. The company has formed a stable financial model for working under government contracts, has not attracted venture capital funding and invests its own funds in development, a representative of the startup said at the time.

In May 2024, Biorg approved a new development strategy, which includes clauses on collaboration with a strategic investor, the company’s PR director Alexander Zverev told RB.RU.

Experts believe that changes in Biorg’s ownership structure are related to plans to attract a major investor or even sell the entire company.

According Leonid Delitsyn, analyst at Finam financial groupThe clause on working with a strategic investor probably means that the startup founder has already found an influential structure capable of winning bids under the import substitution program.

“This structure can become a strategic investor, i.e. buy a significant stake in the company, and perhaps even acquire the entire company. But the buyer usually prefers to deal with only one seller, so during the pre-sale preparation to an external investor, one of the owners acquires the shares of the others,” says Delitsyn.

The Finam analyst adds that at the beginning of 2023 the development prospects looked different and the founder’s goal was to reduce his presence in the project, but not to lose key employees.

“These employees were probably given a stock option, meaning they could buy back their shares at an agreed price if they deemed it profitable. This option was an incentive for them to stay with the company, so it happily survived until the strategist came along,” the analyst said.

As a rule, the consolidation of shares occurs before a larger round with the participation of a strategic investor, explained to RB.RU the managing partner of MalinaVC and founder of venture firm TheQube.vc Anton Pronin.

“Strategists and large funds do not like to work with a large number of individuals as owners. We, as a fund, also buy shares from individuals to consolidate them and continue participating in large rounds with a high valuation,” said Antón Pronin.

Consolidation of shares also increases controllability, which is important in determining a new business strategy.

“I think they are preparing for new products, a new strategy and definitely a new strategic investor in 2024-2025,” Pronin concluded.

• Bioorg is a Russian developer of document digitization, image recognition and personal identification (KYC) systems based on artificial intelligence technologies: computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing (NLP). The company’s core development for the automation of corporate business processes and the digital transformation of government and business is the Beorg Smart Vision SaaS platform.
• The company’s own crowdsourcing platform includes 50,000 operators in Russia. The company is a personal data operator and operates in accordance with the requirements of the FSTEC and the FSB.
• The startup was founded in 2017 by Georgy Zuev and is based in Skolkovo. Since its foundation, the company has completed a number of major commercial and government orders: converting files of civil registry offices into electronic format, processing documents for companies on the Moscow Stock Exchange, and others.
• Biorg’s revenue at the end of 2023 increased by 11% to 196.9 million rubles, net profit amounted to 5.9 million rubles. The company is actively involved in public procurement and during its operation has concluded contracts worth 1.3 billion rubles.