Runa Capital, a Russian seed-stage Venture Capital firm, has made a third investment; in Metabar (http://www.metabar.ru), a free platform that automates the process of creating browser-based applications. The platform is the first of its kind designed specifically to help increase web traffic and brand loyalty for Russian-based internet sites.
According to Michael Ushakov, CEO at Metabar: "The Russian internet today includes hundreds of sites that attract a million plus visitors. Metabar’s team has extensive experience of this market and the resources needed target these websites. Our platform allows website owners to quickly offer applications that can transform casual visitors into regular audiences."
The Metabar platform is designed specifically for ease-of-use, which means no programming or development skills are required. In just a few clicks, any website owner can quickly create a browser-based application, add content from the site including news, instant notifications or even games; and start promoting it to their users. The application sits in a users’ browser as a toolbar continuously extracting information from the main site and can also give access to popular search engines. In fact, by offering these search engine capabilities, website owners can also enter into an advertising revenue share model with Metabar.
"The Russian internet market is growing rapidly, with approximately 50 million users today, and a predicted 60-80 million in three years. The online advertising market alone was worth approximately USD1 billion in 2010," says Dmitry Chikhachev, managing partner of Runa Capital. "Metabar’s business model is similar to California-based Conduit.com with revenue coming via advertising searches. However, Metabar is the first to offer these capabilities in the Russian market. The investment from Runa represents another major step toward realizing our ambition of helping Russian and CIS-based technology talent reach the global stage."
Metabar has been open for beta-testing since Autumn 2010 and has been downloaded by tens of thousands of users. Metabar’s partners include hundreds of Russian web-sites, some of them from noticeable brands such as Vedomosti.ru (a leading daily Russian business publication and partner of Dow Jones and the Financial Times), KP.ru (Komsomolskaya Pravda, the leading Russian tabloid) and Kupivip.ru (the leading Russian online shopping club similar to Gilt.com).
