Grishin Robotics, a company owned by Mail.ru Group CEO Dmitry Grishin, has invested $500,000 in Swivl, a U.S. company that produces robotic video devices.
Swivl said in a statement on its website that Grishin Robotics's investment would be used to accelerate the development of Swivl's second-generation model, which will support mobile devices running on iOS and Android software, and assist with the launch of its integrated video services.
According to Swivl's website, its devices are currently used in over 1,000 schools and 250 universities.
"Swivl be able to bring online education to a new level by radically increasing the amount of high-quality video lectures," Dmitry Grishin said in comments included in the statement.
Swivl is a multipurpose motion and tracking platform for imaging, teleconferencing and other purposes. It can be used to capture lectures and presentations and broadcast them.
Swivl is the third company to receive money from Grishin Robotics, which was founded in June with an initial budget of $25 million.
Earlier investments by Grishin's firm included $250,000 in Double Robotics, a company developing a mobile videoconferencing system, $250,000 in RobotAppStore and a joint $3.5 million investment in a U.S. startup incubator in collaboration with Logitech and Autodesk.
Grishin Robotics was set up in 2012. Grishin became a co-founder of Mail.ru Group in 2005 and was appointed its CEO in 2010.
