The court initiated monitoring proceedings in the Profotek company with investments from Veb Ventures worth 300 million rubles

Konstantin Salnikov was appointed temporary director of the startup. The powers of the current management of the company are limited.

The owners of the business are unknown at this time. Until January 2022, the company was part of Rusnano, which owned it jointly with the offshore company Fot Capital.

“As of the date of filing the application, the amount of creditors’ claims for monetary obligations that are not disputed by the debtor amounts to more than 2 million rubles,” the court documents say.

• In January 2022, the venture fund VEB Ventures invested 300 million rubles in Profotek; The deal was structured by providing a convertible loan from VEB Ventures, RB.RU wrote. This mechanism allows the investor to receive a stake in the startup only if it is successful.
• Profotek’s revenue in 2023 amounted to 111.6 million rubles and the net loss reached 190.5 million rubles.

It was planned that the company would expand its scale with the funds received. It was expected that Profotech products could be installed in at least 10% of the facilities of the total number of rebuilt and newly built substations. At that time, Sergei Vakhterov, CEO of Rusnano Management Company, expressed the idea that Profotek would be of interest to strategic investors in the future.

RB.RU sent requests to Profotek and VEB.RF.

The founder of Dsight and expert in the field of venture investments, Arseniy Dabbakh, evaluated the possibility of returning investors’ funds.

“In the event of bankruptcy, it is difficult to obtain profitability on a convertible loan. Rusnano or VEB.RF may have signed guarantees or guarantees for other natural or legal persons associated with the company. In this case, the possibilities of receiving this type of return are maintained. It is possible that in connection with the restructuring of the activities and portfolios of Rusnano and VEB.RF the issue of bankruptcy has arisen,” the expert considers.

The very direction of Profotech’s activity looks promising for Dabbagh.

“Energy and software related to the management and optimization of electrical networks is an important asset. For example, many investors in Europe and the US pay special attention to this area,” said the expert.