Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

ITech, a Russian venture fund specializing in internet and new-media companies, has announced that it has purchased the Moscow ticket-seller MDTZK for 493 million rubles (12 million euros). The move was explained by Gleb Davidyuk, Managing Partner at ITech, as an effort to strongly shore up the fund’s position in the ticket industry.

In the coming years, he says that ITech will meet with the main players in the ticket industry, technology companies and ticket offices. Their intention is to acquire the main players in this area and Startup Afisha reports that the fund is willing to devote another $40 million (more than 30 million euros) on this project.

Founded in 2011, ITech invests in The Battle Of The Brands, Qiwi Post (whom we covered back in July of this year), and Seopult. It previously invested in a Turkish event-and-social-gifting startup called Giftofoni, but when I looked into this company, I learned that its domain has expired.

According to the MDTZK’s website, the company sells tickets for more than 5,000 events daily from their 120 ticket-booths located in various locations in Moscow.

MDTZK is hardly a startup, having been around for 87 years, and iTech move is more of a private equity play, betting on growing the business through online  and possibly mobile channels. From our prospective, it is probably a less risky strategy to apply new technologies to an existing business, rather than letting startups experiment with user acquisition in the busy Web2.0 space (and fail).

We are speculating now, but beside online and mobile ticket sales and delivery, further monetization strategies can include mobile payments at events, event discovery and promotion.
Tweet

Follow @Brendan_Maynard