TechCrunch 11 September 2012
Ivi.ru, the “Hulu of Russia” that offers streamed premium TV and films from international and local big-name content holders, has raised another $40 million round of funding. The investment was led by Baring Vostok, a private equity firm, along with existing investors ru-Net, Tiger Global, Prof-Media, and Frontier Ventures. Oleg Tumanov, ivi.ru founder and CEO, tells TechCrunch that the funds will be used to build out the company’s technology, as well as its content catalog, amid rumors that ivi’s inspiration — Hulu itself — and Netflix are eyeing a move into the Russian market.
The company does not disclose how much money the site has raised since launching in February 2010, but Tumanov notes that prior to this, ivi.ru had raised “several dozen millions” of dollars in investment.
Although Tumanov acknowledges that Hulu and Netflix have been sniffing around his patch, he says that without knowing the final conclusion of that story, this investment is also about continuing to build out its own offering to better compete with existing players, such as YouTube and Rutube.
Rutube itself in June made a stronger move into offering premium content as part of a wider redesign that also included a new logo from Facebook’s designers, the Cuban Council.
YouTube, meanwhile, is currently the country’s most popular online video site, with 24.9 million monthly uniques, according to comScore.
In contrast, ivi says it gets more than 10 million monthly uniques, watching more than 50 million videos across its website and mobile apps. Those numbers, Tumanov says, have grown by leaps in the last couple of years (a year ago, the site only had 3 million visitors).