OREANDA-NEWS. June 25, 2012. RBC OJSC (MICEX-RTS: RBCM) hereby announces the launch of a new project called Zayavka.ru Customer Service (www.zayavka.ru).

Zayavka.ru is a service designed to help people shopping for goods and services in Moscow and the Moscow region to submit a request and to get prompt and high-quality offers from vendors. The project got under way in early 2012, when a database of products and services offered by vendors began to take shape. Starting yesterday the service is available to customers, who can be both individuals and legal entities. The service is free, and its business model is based on selling advertising space and special marketing packages to vendors.

Earlier, RBC had acquired a 59% stake in the project with an option to boost its stake to 65% over the next three years. The transaction totaled USD 3.4m, including the amount paid to increase RBC's stake and investments in development. Unlike some similar niche companies operating in Russia, Zayavka.ru strives to create a unified "entry point" for shoppers, meeting their demand for any goods and services, which can be offered online, including non-standard items. Zayavka.ru intends to expand into other Russian million-plus cities further down the road, while rolling out mobile applications.

"We have developed a conceptually new approach to communications between customers and vendors on the Russian Internet market, and we are hopeful that by leveraging RBC's ample marketing power to promote online projects we will be able to make Zayavka.ru Customer Service one of the most popular theme resources on the Russian Internet," Alexey Dubrovsky, Zayavka.ru's designer, head, and partner said.

"Our goal is to create a unified platform for finding any good or product. Thousands of vendors registered on Zayavka.ru are ready and willing to make offers. I'm confident that our large audience will find this universal service interesting and useful. In addition, drawing in vendors to post their offers on the website could produce a synergetic effect, since they can be induced to place advertising on other RBC's Internet resources as well," RBC's CEO Sergey Lavrukhin said.