VK (company)

VK, known as Mail.ru Group until 12 October 2021, is a Russian technology company. It started in 1998 as an e-mail service and went on to become a major corporate figure in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet.

VK operates an e-mail service, an Internet portal Mail.ru, and popular Russian social networking platforms VK, Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir. Additionally, VK manages various e-commerce, transport and communication platforms. It also offers business-oriented products, including a corporate email and communication system.

In 2014, VK's sites reached approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company was in the top 5 of the largest Internet companies based on the number of total pages viewed.

In October 2021, Mail.ru Group was renamed VK Company Limited, after its most popular product, VKontakte.

History

The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a company founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as a spin-off from DataArt. It received an initial investment of US$1 million from the well-known investor (and fencing champion) James Melcher.

The Mail.ru business expanded rapidly to reach the No. 1 market position in Russia by 2000. Attempts to fund the company's expansion in 2000–2001 were thwarted by the collapse of the technology bubble and Mail.ru had to seek merger partners.

In 2001, Yuri Milner, at the time managing NetBridge (the owner of several internet brands), persuaded the entrepreneur Igor Linshits to back a merger of the Mail.ru business with NetBridge. Igor Linshits subsequently took an active role in the development of the Mail.ru business. In connection with the merger, Milner became Mail.ru CEO.

The company began to operate as Mail.ru on 16 October 2001. Before that time its brand name was owned by Port.ru. It is headed by Dmitry Grishin.

In 2003 Milner resigned from Mail.ru and subsequently set up another internet venture, Digital Sky Technologies (DST). In 2006 Igor Linshits sold his stake in Mail.ru to Tiger Fund and Milner's DST for more than $100 million. In September 2010, DST changed its name to Mail.ru Group. Dmitry Grishin became one of the Mail.ru Group co-founders.

In February 2010, Mail.ru announced the 100% acquisition of the video game developer Astrum Nival from its former owners. From that point, Astrum Nival acts under the name of Mail.ru. On September 29, 2011, the studio was renamed to Allods Team. The studio is known for developing ''Allods Online'' and '' Skyforge''.

In October 2010, Mail.ru Group announced plans for an IPO via the London stock-market listing of a subsidiary – also called Mail.ru – worth more than $5bn. The IPO offered a stake of about 17% of the subsidiary. The subsidiary included about a quarter of the group's shareholding in Facebook, stakes in Russia's two biggest social networking sites and Mail.ru. The company hired Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and VTB Capital to run the listing. After the public offering, the global operations of Mail.ru Group continued as the privately held company DST Global. Major shareholders at the time included Alisher Usmanov, Mail.ru Group's corporate sibling Tencent Holdings, Tencent's largest shareholder Prosus, and Tiger Management.

In March 2012, Yuri Milner stepped down from the role of Chairman of Mail.ru and from the board of directors. Dmitry Grishin was elected to the board of directors and appointed as chairman of the Board while retaining his CEO position. There were no other changes to management or to the Board. On May 11, 2022, Dmitry Grishin stepped down as chairman of the board of directors and non-executive director of the company

In November 2012, it was reported that Mail.ru would discontinue using Google search services.Mail.Ru откажется от поисковых услуг Google
// Vesti.ru Full migration to the use of Mail.ru's own engine occurred in the summer of 2013.Jennifer Slegg: Russia's Mail.Ru Drops Google Search, Launches Own Search Engine
// searchenginewatch.com, 3 July 2013

In late 2012, Mail.ru Group's plans for buying two-letter domain My.com became known. This was interpreted as an intention of dominating world markets and of the upcoming re-branding of services under this name.Mail.ru пойдет за рубеж с новым именем
// dp.ru, 30 October 2012 At the end of 2012, Mail.ru Group bought the Ukrainian email service mail.ua and the registration of email addresses using this domain started on 23 April 2013.

On 3 October 2016, Mail.ru announced that they had acquired 100% of the game developer Pixonic's shares.

In January 2018, Mail.ru acquired ESForce, a holding company that owns a number of different esports businesses, including both Virtus.pro and SK Gaming, for US$150 million.

In September 2018, Alibaba announced buying a 10% stake in Mail.ru, which would have a value of $484 million based on Mail.ru's market capitalization on 10 September 2018.

In July 2019, Tencent-backed iDreamSky Technology Holdings and Mail.ru Group announced an alliance in the gaming sector in China and Europe. In December 2019, Mail.ru Group formed a partnership with Sberbank to develop the food and transportation service O2O.

In 2020, the state Russian Direct Investment Fund, China's Tencent, Naspers, and others bought $600 million of GDRs and bonds from Mail.ru. The funds were raised for the development of O2O and AliExpress Russia.

In October 2021, Sberbank of Russia and "Mail.ru Group" invested 6,1 billion roubles each O2O food and transportation service, the total of their investments in equal shares now touching about 43 billion roubles in 2021. On the whole, shares of both investors didn't change from 45,01% each.

In November 2021, Sberbank of Russia signed binding papers for selling its 36% of shares of "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling entity of VK company) to Gazprombank for 12,8 billion of roubles by the end of the year 2021.

In December 2021, Sogaz Group bought all USM's (owned by Alisher Usmanov and his partners) indirect stake in "MF Tekhnologii" (controlling 57,3% of VK company).

On September 26, 2022, the VKontakte social networking app was removed from Apple's App Store, along with VK's Mail.ru, Mail.ru Cloud, VK Music, and VK Clips.

Statistics

* In 2005 there were more than 30 million users with 25 million emails a day.
* By the end of 2006 it was announced that a strategic agreement with Yandex was achieved about the use of a Yandex search engine instead of Google. This has been reversed in January 2010. This collaboration was dropped in November 2012, with migration to its own engine, which ended in mid-2013.
* In January 2007 30% shares of Mail.ru were bought by South African company Naspers for $165 million, and by 2019, the Naspers spin-off Prosus had 28% of Mail.ru.

Services

VK Group offers a variety of online communication products and entertainment services for Russian speakers all over the world, such as:
* Email & portal – Mail.ru E-mail, Main portal, content projects
* Social networks – VK, OK.ru, My World
* Instant messaging – Agent, ICQ
* Online Games via a newly founded brand called My.Games – MMO games, Social games, Mobile games
* Search & e-commerce – Search, Headhunter, Price comparison
* My.com – integrated communication and entertainment platform.
* Cloud – cloud storage similar to Dropbox, apps available for PC and smartphones
* DST Global – private equity and venture capital investments
* – voice virtual assistant app for smartphones
* – smart speaker
* – stream monetizing service

Controversies

On 15 May 2017, The Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed a decree to impose a ban on Mail.ru and its popular social networking services including VKontakte and Odnoklassniki as part of Ukraine's continued sanctions on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and involvement in the War in Donbas. The move was widely criticised as censorship, and Reporters Without Borders condemned the ban, calling it a "disproportionate measure that seriously undermines the Ukrainian people's right to information and freedom of expression."Ukraine's Poroshenko to block Russian social networks
BBC News (16 May 2017) Mail.ru itself estimated (in August 2017) that the ban had cost them around 1.5% of total revenues in 2017.

On 5 November 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that Russian state organizations with ties to Vladimir Putin pursued between 2009 and 2011 large investments in Facebook and Twitter via an intermediary—Russian-American billionaire and entrepreneur Yuri Milner, founder of Mail.ru and DST Global, who had befriended Facebook founder Mark ZuckerbergKremlin-owned Firms Linked to Major Investments in Twitter and Facebook
. ''International Consortium of Investigative Journalists – ICIJ.'' 5 November 2017. and was a business associate of Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law.

References

External links

*

{{Authority control

Webmail
Internet technology companies of Russia
Russian brands
Web portals
Internet search engines
Internet censorship in Ukraine
Companies listed on the London Stock Exchange
Internet properties established in 1998
1998 establishments in Russia
2010 initial public offerings
Companies based in Moscow
Yuri Milner