“Svyaz Engineering” Company has bought 70 percent of shares of the Russian startup “Aerogreen”. This was reported in the press release received by the editorial board of “Lenta. Ru”. No information on the conditions of the transaction was provided by the parties.
According to the estimates of the Director for the Investment of FPI Innovation Fund Ilya Rodin, the transaction volume of the startup purchase could amount to from 3 to 5 million dollars, while the total amount of investment needed by the project was estimated by the expert at $ 8.5 million.
According to Head for Innovative Development Management of “RusGidro” Oleg Kalinko, “the technology of Aerogreen contains a relatively low technological risk, because the devices with the use of this technology are already made, and they work”.
Rodin suggested that with this purchase “Svyaz Engineering” has taken the obligations of financing the current needs of the project, but at the same time it received the opportunity to influence the planning. Kalinko estimated the energy market in Russia as a small one, but with development prospects - both in terms of global trends and the domestic trend on the introduction of high technologies. He notes that in this situation the most interesting thing is to understand the logic of the corporation that acquired a share in such a narrow and non-core asset, instead of, for example, ordering a batch of finished products and without taking the sufficiently high market risks of the project.
In 2014 the startup was selected by a jury of experts and was accelerated within the program GenerationS of CleanTech section. Aerogreen Company (“Aerogreen” Joint Stock Company) was founded in 2008 by the Irkutsk engineer Yuri Kruilin. According to the team, the model of a wind turbine developed by them makes it possible to extract energy from the wind with a larger efficiency than generators with three blades that are available at the market. 24 million roubles have been invested into the project, 22 million of them being personal funds of the project founders.
Author: Anna Dorozhkina