Avito Acquires New Developments Specialist Roomberry and Launches Two Features

Avito Real Estate, the real estate vertical of Russian horizontal Avito, has acquired Roomberry, a database for new build developments in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Roomberry provides data on existing new buildings and the conditions for the purchase of apartments directly from the developer.

Founded in 2015 and based in Moscow, Roomberry has been used as a technology partner by Avito for several years, but will now be integrated into Avito Real Estate, with current staff continuing to work at Roomberry.

According to a story originally published in Russian technology and business publication RB.ru, the financial details of the transaction were undisclosed.

Roomberry recorded revenues of RUB116M ($1.57M) in 2021, three times its revenue in 2020, with a net profit of 6.6M roubles ($89,400).

Avito was sold by Dutch internet giant Prosus for an estimated $2.5Bn to Kismet Capital Group in October 2022. The sale was included in Online Marketplaces' list of biggest mergers and acquisitions of the year.

Meanwhile, Avito has launched two new features.

The first, a tool for businesses to assess the potential of commercial real estate. The feature lets business owners buy reports that analyse key data points including footfall, proximity to competitors, and resident demographics.

The reports cost RUB399 ($5.60) to purchase, and are available in cities with a population of at least 1M people.

The new service implements the functionality of BestPlace, an artificial intelligence-powered predictive geo analytical tool that provides end-to-end visibility of 40 unique local shopper patterns.

The tool is current being tested by 50% of users of the Avito smartphone app, with plans to roll out to everyone if demand stays high.

The second feature to launch is native video recording in the Avito app, which allows users to upload videos up to three minutes long directly in the app.

Videos show up on Avito's homepage and can be clicked through to directly to listings. Avito says these videos are already being viewed one million times a day.

Avito manually processes and moderates videos in the 24 hours after upload, before publishing the next day, according to the company.

The feature is being tested by a limited number of users in Avito’s general, automotive and service verticals and will gradually be rolled out to all users.