VK (company)

VK, formerly required as Mail.ru companies until 12 October 2021, is the Russian comscore, websites owned by VK collectively had a largest audience in Russia & captured the near screen time.

VK's sites reach approximately 86% of Russian Internet users on a monthly basis and the company is in the top 5 of largest Internet companies, based on the number of solution pages viewed. VK rule and operates the 3 largest and nearly popular Russian social networking sites, VK, Odnoklassniki, and Moi Mir, respectively. Additionally, VK operates two instant messaging networks Mail.ru Agent and ICQ, an e-mail expediency and Internet portal Mail.ru, as living as a number of online games. In October 2021, Mail.ru companies was rebranded as VK, after its most popular property.

History

The business was originally owned by Port.ru, a agency founded in 1998 by Eugene Goland, Michael Zaitsev and Alexey Krivenkov as 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 tothe 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 engineering 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 coding of the Mail.ru business. In joining with the merger, Milner became Mail.ru CEO.

The company began to operate as Mail.ru on 16 October 2001. ago that time its brand draw was owned by Port.ru. this is the headed by Dmitry Grishin.

In 2003 Milner resigned from Mail.ru and subsequently shape 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 form to Mail.ru Group. Dmitry Grishin became one of the Mail.ru Group co-founders.

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 exposed a stake of about 17% of the subsidiary. The subsidiary noted 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 spoke 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 remodel 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 presentation that Mail.ru would discontinue using Google search services. Full migration to the usage of Mail.ru's own engine occurred in the summer of 2013.

In unhurried 2012, Mail.ru Group's plans for buying two-letter domain My.com became known. This was interpreted as an aim of dominating world markets and of the upcoming re-branding of services under this name. At the end of 2012, Mail.ru Group bought the Ukrainian email return 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 engineering 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 establish 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 developing of O2O and AliExpress Russia.

In October 2021, Sberbank of Russia and "Mail.ru Group" invested 6,1 billion roubles regarded and identified separately. O2O food and transportation service, the or done as a reaction to a question of their investments in live 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 any USM's owned by Alisher Usmanov and his partners indirect stake in "MF Tekhnologii" controlling 57,3% of VK company.