Russia’s Mail.Ru buys controlling stake in education project

MOSCOW, Aug 25 (PRIME) -- Russian Internet giant Mail.Ru Group has acquired a controlling stake in GeekBrains, an online education platform for developers with a monthly audience of 500,000 users, Mail.Ru Group said Thursday in a statement.

“We are dedicated to providing people with learning opportunities to become skilled IT professionals...Our online courses and other educational content that we share are very popular, and we are happy that together with GeekBrains we can make education even more accessible,” Mail.Ru Group’s Chairman and CEO Dmitry Grishin said.

The resource’s founders will remain its shareholders and continue to run the project.

“We really appreciate that after a thorough analysis of the online studies market, Mail.Ru Group have chosen our product…Our main goal is to modernize learning so that it would be more fitting for the XXIth century. IT education today has to be based around practice, working in teams on real projects; employers should be included in the process as commissioners for the whole course. We have many plans for our collaboration,” GeekBrains cofounder Alexander Nikitin said.

Over the last 12 months, the number of registered GeekBrains users has increased from 200,000 to a million.

Investing in GeekBrains goes in line with Mail.Ru Group’s long history of supporting IT education development. The company creates unique practice-oriented learning centers.

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