Foodza, a startup that organizes direct supplies of fresh fruit and vegetable to retail stores, restaurants and cafés, recently secured $1 mio in a round of funding led by Mail.Ru Group. Among the other participants in the deal are Larix VC, a fund launched by Moscow-based businessmen Oskar Hartmann and Igor Rybakov; FJ Labs, the investment firm of Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin; and several individual investors.
The respective amounts of these contributions have not been disclosed, but Foodza founder Vladimir Kolyaznikov told Vedomosti business daily, that the founders have kept a 85% stake in the startup.
Western serial investors Grinda and Marin have already been involved in several Russian startups. German businessman Hartmann has been established in Moscow since 2008: he founded KupiVip, which quickly became the number one fashion sales site in Russia, hiring Kolyaznikov as general manager.
Mail.Ru Group has made an alliance with Alibaba to develop a giant e-commerce platform in Russia. The group has also invested repeatedly in B2C food delivery startups. The deal with Foodza marks its first investment in the B2B segment.
This story initially appeared in East-West Digital News, an international news resource covering the Russian innovation scene.