Ukrainian fund SMRK made an exit from the startup Preply

The Ukrainian SMRK fund made another exit from a Ukrainian startup. This time – Preply. AIN.UA editor tells the details.

• According to Andriy Dovzhenko, managing partner of SMRK, the fund first invested in Preply in 2015.
• In 2017, the Ukrainian startup Preply sold its stake for $ 4 million. The main investor then was the German venture capital fund Point Nine Capital. Among the rest was the Ukrainian fund SMRK.
• In 2020, Preply closed the round for $ 10 million, the total amount of funds raised amounted to $ 15 million. The founders did not report the start-up estimate at that time, but according to Andriy Dovzhenko, it was according to this estimate that SMRK passed the exit.
• The share of SMRK was bought out by the Polish fund INOVO. Apart from this, he also invested directly in Preply. The size of the deal was not disclosed.
• According to Dovzhenko, the exit multiple was 3.2x, which the managing partner of SMRK called “a good result”.

“Now, Preply is doing well and we decided to take profit. The SMRK Fund continues to actively invest in startups at an early stage and we need funds: due to a good exit, we managed to get them,” – Dovzhenko explained the reason for leaving the business for Preply.

Andriy Dovzhenko, SMRK.

As a reminder, SMRK has already made a partial exit in 2019. In March 2019, Horizon Capital invested $ 10 million in Ajax Systems, partially redeeming the share of SMRK: the fund invested $ 1 million in the Ukrainian manufacturer of security systems back in 2015 and remained the only investor until the arrival of Horizon Capital. Then Dovzhenko said that “the fund got a very good way out of the partial sale of previously purchased shares, and the long-term goal is to bring Ajax Systems to an IPO”.

Source: ain.ua