Acronis, an IT company established by Russian engineers Sergei Belousov and Ilya Zubarev, has been valued at $1.5 bln.
Over 15 years, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology alumni and technology entrepreneurs have built a global company that develops cybersecurity, data storage and protection solutions. This month, Goldman Sachs and several other foreign investors bought a minority share in Acronis for $147 mio, which indicates that the software developer’s capitalization now exceeds $1 bln. The IT community has no question about this valuation – unlike previously with Rusnano’s OCSiAl unicorn.
Currently, Acronis has 1,400employees in 18 countries and its headquarters is based in Switzerland. The company’s products have 5 mio individual and 500K corporate end users. Founder and CEO Sergei Belousov is confident that in three years, the company’s profit will break the ceiling of $1 bio, for three reasons. First of all, users need to secure their devices because computing is increasingly more often delegated from data processing centers to devices themselves. Second of all, cybercrime is on the rise, which means in addition to fighting back attacks, it is important to be able to quickly restore data if necessary. Finally, the company offers affordable prices on Big Data tools.
Earlier this year, another software company founded by Russians, Luxoft, confirmed its unicorn status. Last February it was sold to a transnational corporation for $2 bln.