Ukrainian entrepreneur Vlad Shmunis became a billionaire thanks to a recent deal signed by RingCentral, his cloud communications company. This was reported in Forbes . RingCentral, based in Belmont, California, provides business telephony, messaging, video conferencing and other collaboration services.
On October 3, RingCentral announced that it will partner with Avaya, a telecommunications equipment provider, on a new cloud platform. RingCentral will pay Avaya $ 500 million, including an advance of $ 375 million - mainly in RingCentral shares - for future payments and licensing rights, and a $ 125 million investment in preferred shares for a 6% stake in Avaya.
The deal will give RingCentral access to 100 million Avaya users (versus RingCentral's 2 million) and help pay off significant debt.
Avaya and RingCentral are up 30.7% and 28%, respectively, following the announcement of the deal. While Avaya peaked on October 9, RingCentral's market cap is still growing. Its stock on Friday closed last week at $ 170.17, up 40.3% from its announced price. RingCentral had a market cap of $ 14.1 billion.
According to Forbes, Shmunis, the current CEO of RingCentral, is now worth $ 1.3 billion. The fortune of his partner Vlad Vendrov, a university graduate in St. Petersburg, was estimated by the magazine at 600 million dollars.
Shmunis and his family immigrated to the United States in the 1970s. After graduating from San Francisco State University with a master's degree in computer science, he took a job as an engineer at a Silicon Valley startup.
Before launching RingCentral in 1992, Shmunis founded Ring Zero Systems, a corporate communications software company. Ring Zero was acquired by Motorola in 1998 for an undisclosed amount. Shumunis launched RingCentral in 1999 with Vendrov, who was previously an engineer at RingZero and Motorola.
