PRESS: Mail.Ru Group to enter global cloud market with Disk-O

MOSCOW, May 29 (PRIME) -- Russian Internet company Mail.Ru Group will enter the international market of cloud services, where it plans to win 1 million users, and experts assess investments in promotion of the company’s project at U.S. $10 million at least, business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday.

Mail.Ru Group unveiled an international version of product Disk-O, which enables users to exploit cloud storage facilities as hard disk drives of their computers.

The service will be offered in China, France, Germany, India, Spain, Turkey, the U.K., and the U.S. Most of the markets were chosen by the level of people’s income, popularity of online services, and readiness of users to pay for them, a Mail.Ru Group spokesperson said without disclosing the amount of investments.

A decision to enter the Turkish market is explained by audience support and a high level of loyalty to the Mail.Ru Group brand.

Disk-O is an application for personal computers running on Windows and masOS, working with cloud storage facilities Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, and the like. Disk-O is one of the world’s four existing products of this kind with its rivals being Expondrive, NetDrive, and WebDrive.

In Russia, Disk-O was launched in November 2017 and covers 1 million devices. Mail.Ru Group hopes to involve 1 million connections on foreign markets.

Sergei Negodyaev, director for work with portfolio companies at the Internet Initiatives Development Fund, said that Mail.Ru Group’s total expenses on advertising would be from 700 million rubles per year, or $10.8 million, judging by the company’s plans and costs of subscription in Russia from 150 rubles per month for individuals.

Alexander Chachava, a managing partner at Leta Capital, agreed that expenses should count at least $10 million for a successful start.

(64.5394 rubles – U.S. $1)

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