Kismet Capital Group, owned by entrepreneur Ivan Tavrin, has already signed a binding agreement with Avito's owner, South Africa's Naspers, on the deal and received its approval from the government and the FAS, The Bell reported.
The deal is expected to be closed in October 2022.
It is announced that the new owner of Avito intends to adhere to the current long-term platform development strategy; the current team of top managers headed by CEO Vladimir Pravdin will continue to manage the company.
In May, Prosus, a Dutch investment company that is part of Naspers, announced that Avito was up for sale. Prosus owns 100% of Avito.
Earlier it was reported that VK was in talks with Prosus to buy Avito. Another contender for the purchase was called businessman Vladimir Potanin.
According to the interlocutor of The Bell, Ivan Tavrin's holding offered the highest price. Ivan Tavrin was an understandable investor for Naspers - in the 2010s he was a board member of Mail.Ru Group, of which Naspers also owned a large block of shares.
Avito is now the most popular online classifieds platform in Russia. According to VK, Avito accounted for half of the entire ad service market in 2020. According to data cited by RBC, the platform has a daily audience of 22 million people. The number of active ads on Avito exceeds 90 million. For the entire 2021 revenue of the Russian legal entity of the service amounted to 42.6 billion rubles, net profit - 14.4 billion rubles.
