LinguaLeo Receives Financing From Social Discovery Ventures

NEW YORK, June 17, 2015 /CNW/ - LinguaLeo, the market leader in online English language learning in Russia and CIS, has received financing from the new strategic investor Social Discovery Ventures (SD Ventures) with participation from Runa Capital, an investor in the first round.

The funds will allow LinguaLeo to achieve self-sufficiency, while maintaining the core team and continuing strategic directions of product development: further improvement of education quality and strengthening of user motivation mechanisms.

LinguaLeo considers the SD Ventures investment to be a strategic one - a number of projects in the new investor's portfolio are complementary to the services and development strategies of LinguaLeo. Projects that have been funded by SD Ventures include social networks (Shocase, Streetlife), music services (Shazam), a website for finding travel partners (TripTogether), dating websites (AsianDate, Moonit, etc.), and other online projects.

Overall, LinguaLeo has attracted over US$3.7 million in investments. In 2010 - the year the company was founded - the startup received $200,000 from angel investors Igor Ryabenko, Egor Rudy and Sergey Kuznetsov. In spring 2012, the company closed a round with $3 million from the venture capital firm Runa Capital.

Over 11 million users worldwide learn English with the help of LinguaLeo. Most of its users are from Russia, Ukraine and other CIS countries. More than a million users live in Brazil and Turkey.

About LinguaLeo 

LinguaLeo's mission is to help people master foreign languages. LinguaLeo uses game formats and interesting, high-quality content in order to motivate users to regularly practice a foreign language and achieve results. LinguaLeo is available as a web app, as Android, iOS and Windows Phone applications, as well as a plug in for most popular browsers. Over 11 million people worldwide use the service to learn English.

About SD Ventures 

SD Ventures is an international group of companies which invests in a number of online social discovery projects around the globe such as travel, dating, language learning, and mobile games, etc.

SOURCE Social Discovery Ventures

Alisa Veselova, [phone], [email protected], http://www.sdventures.com