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Advance Capital is pleased to announce closing of the sale of 100% in Westwing Russia to a PE fund Elbrus Capital
Advance Capital is pleased to announce closing of the sale of 100% in Westwing Russia – Westwing Group’s business in Russia. Westwing Russia develops an E-Commerce platform in the home & living segment and has operations in Russia as well as in Kazakhstan. With revenues of ~RUB1bn as of 2017, Westwing Russia is one of the leading players on the Russian E-Commerce market in the home & living segment.
Westwing’s business model is based on utilizing a “flash sales model”, which assumes sending out new collection of products on a weekly basis to a select group of subscribers or club members. Therefore, the company is able to optimize working capital and give more broad options of new products to its customers.
Elbrus Capital acted as a buyer in this transaction, which would help Elbrus strengthen its positions in the Russian E-Commerce market. Deal value is not disclosed at this point.
Advance Capital acted as Seller’s exclusive financial advisor. As part of the deal process, Advance Capital team established a structured and competitive sale process among strategic and financial investors, which allowed identifying several non-trivial potential buyers.
Dmitry Kasyanenko, Managing Director at Advance Capital:
“We see a growing interest from financial investors to the Russian E-Commerce market in the recent years, which can be attributed to the fact that Russia has a much lower penetration rate of this format when compared to other developing or even developed markets. In our opinion, acquisition of Westwing Russia by Elbrus Capital is another proof of this trend.”
Gregory Gorelik, Managing Partner at Westwing Russia:
“Our model consists of wide assortment accessible only to club members, it is changing constantly. We will keep this concept, but we also plan to launch fixed product lines, which will be accessible not only to Westwing’s club members.”
Information on Westwing Group:
Westwing Group was founded in 2011. Founders of the company are Delia Fischer, Stefan Smalla, Tim Schäfer, Matthias Siepe and Georg Biersack. Westwing is engaged in the business of selling furniture and decorative components on its website in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and seven other European countries. Revenue of the company totaled more than EUR220m in 2017. Westwing carried out an IPO on the Frankfurt stock exchange in October of 2018.
Information on Elbrus Capital:
Elbrus Capital is one of the leading PE funds in Russia and the CIS. It was founded by Dmitry Kryukov and Robert Thielen. Elbrus Capital specializes in investing in dynamically growing companies, which are looking for opportunities for growth and for increasing its market share. In particular, the fund has invested in other companies in the E-Commerce market, including Shefmarket and Busfor.
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