Fruugo's Ownership Structure Revealed
Adding to the yesterday's news on Fruugo's service launch plans, just this morning the Finnish business media Talouselämä has published the ownership structure of Fruugo.
Risto Siilasmaa, founder and chairman F-Secure, is the biggest owner with 30,9 % share. Fruugo's founder and Evangelist, Nils ”Nippe” Forsblom is the second biggest owner with almost 30 %. Risto Siilasmaa came aboard in the very beginning and brougth in Nokia chairman Jorma Ollila and the ex-CEO Reijo Syrjäläinen. Jorma Ollila owns 9,4 % of the company. A year ago, Seppo Sairanen (the previous main owner of FIM financial group) invested in the company, and last summer the Finnish media group Sanoma, who's Kim Ignatius recently entered the board. Sixth biggest owner is Kalle Vuoristo, the CTO of Fruugo.
The full ownership structure of Fruugo, as published by Talouselämä:
| Ownership % | |
| First Fellow (Risto Siilasmaa) | 30,9 |
| Queensway Dev. (Nils Forsblom) | 29,2 |
| Kestrel (Jorma Ollila) | 9,4 |
| Optiopaja (Seppo Sairanen) | 6,8 |
| Sanoma | 5,9 |
| Kalle Vuoristo | 5,0 |
According to the article, Fruugo has burned around 10-15M euros so far, maybe even more. They have slightly above 60 own employees at the moment, plus tens of consults.
Fruugo is an aggregator bringing the online web stores under one service. Pan-European web commerce is still difficult, but through Fruugo the European web stores can sell their products to the whole Europe, and all consumers can buy the products of all merchant integrated with the service, using their native language and local payment methods. The business model, as we reported yesterday, is based on transaction commissions. The cut Fruugo takes is around 10 percent, more or less depending on the product category. The company believes the rate is justifiable to merchants, as using the service Fruugo will take care of payment systems, fraud management, customer service, and currency exchange.
Fruugo's public launch is coming up in Q2, but the exact countries are not disclosed. Next Fruugo faces the challenge to make itself known to the millions of European online shoppers.
(See our previous coverage on Fruugo.)
Wow! Risto has a bigger cut than I anticipated!
When I took the Certified Board Member (HHJ) course, I learned that according to the Finnish Companies' Act (Oskayhtiölaki) a limited company MUST provide the list of shareholders to anyone wishing to have it... So it wouldn't take too much investigative journalism to find this information.
Mikko, you're totally correct but I have to say that since last week had no one asked for the list of shareholders from us and in a start-up I don't see many reasons why start-up should actively promote its list of shareholders list. It's available when requested.
fruugo screenshot here: http://twitpic.com/189cm
Some more screenshots also available from Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/fruugo/.
But beware, next time when you enter the beta site it might look different. We're truly beta-testing, not making launch campaign with beta label.
Janne, I assume the pricing is not correct yet? Randomly checking the prices were notably higher on Fruugo than in other online stores (Example: http://is.gd/hK4n vs http://is.gd/hK4u)
Toni,
Don't worry, the prices are with all taxes etc. so the price you see is always the final (not incl. delivery). We don't control prices, merchants do, so if a merchant has set a high price they'll most likely lose the game for another merchant who is selling same product cheaper.
However, at moment we have focused a bit more to the vertical level with products, not having multiple merchants selling same product -yet, but soon. It's just a beta still, so there will tens of thousands products coming soon and also multiple merchants selling same products so you'll have opportunity to find the best deal.
[...] Finland, Seppo Sairanen known for making his wealth from the private banking corporation FIM (and having invested into Fruugo). Other members of the board include Lauri Hulkko and Ilkka Seppälä. One thing that does surprise [...]