Yandex acquires 10% of U.S. search engine Blekko for $15 mln
MOSCOW. Sept 30 (Interfax) - Russia's leading Internet search portal Yandex has invested $15 million in 10% of the U.S. Internet search engine Blekko, a Yandex statement says.
"Yandex has acquired 10% of Blekko," a source intimate with the deal details told Interfax. Yandex thereby became one of the main investors during the latest round of investment in which Blekko raised $30 million.
Also taking part in the investment round were U.S. direct investment fund MLC and current Blekko investors U.S. Venture Partners, CMEA Capital, and Pivot North Capital.
Yandex General Director Arkady Volozh will join the Blekko board of directors.
Blekko is a start-up created in 2007. Three years later the search engine blekko.com was launched, operating only with "high-quality search results through the integration of search algorithms and user curation from web users," Yandex said. "This method helps blekko provide safe and useful results."
"We love Blekko and think it's a great product - a quality search engine that organically combines search algorithms with expert opinions. We believe the outlook for this approach is strong and that the Blekko team is poised to make it a success," Volozh is quoted in the statement as saying.
"Blekko launched its search engine about a year ago. Since then, the number of users and number of processed requests has been growing. This is the first search engine start-up that has succeeded in the past ten years, Yandex representative Ochip Mandzhikov told Interfax. "As an investor in Blekko, we are in every way interested it their product's success. We are ready to extend our expertise and are considering the possibility of technological cooperation," he said.
"This investment is also an opportunity to see how search engines are able to work on the American market," Mandzhikov said.
Yandex has been working with start-ups since June of last year. In September, the company invested in Israel's face.com, which has developed cutting-edge Internet face-recognition software. In its second round of investment-raising, face.com netted $4.3 million from Yandex and the investment company Rhodium.