A Russian business executive who orchestrated a $50 million bet on Facebook this week said he was confident the "consumer Internet" would pay off.
Don't be fooled by the $50 million investment, which has an option to extend to $75 million, as it pales in comparison with the $450 million chipped in by Goldman Sachs in the same deal, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The $50 million is part of a larger strategy that includes previous purchases of about 5 percent ownership of Zynga, an online gaming Web site and 5 percent of discount promoter Groupon.
The Russian investment firm, DST Group, formerly Digital Sky Technologies, is the combined effort of Chief Executive Officer Yuri Milner's business instincts and Russian coal and steel oligarch Alisher Usmanov's financial backing, the Times reported.
The pair raised $900 million in November with an initial public offering for Mail.ru and a few other Web companies on the London Stock Exchange.
The pair owns 40 percent of DST Global, which now owns 7.6 percent of Facebook. In addition, Mail.ru, a Russian e-mail service, owns 2.4 percent of Facebook.
In an interview published in late December, Milner said, "We chose a strategy of total and unconditional focus on the consumer Internet, and I would say, even the social Internet."
Why invest in "the consumer Internet"? The answer is research, the report said.
DST began its purchases in Internet firms in 2005, noting that growth in social and e-commerce Web sites in Eastern Europe and Russia was outpacing growth in the United States, the Times reported.