Rolith, Inc., the leader in developing advanced nanostructured coatings and devices, today announced that it has received Series A funding in the total amount of $5 million from DFJ VTB Capital Aurora and AGC America Inc.

As the leader in developing advanced nanostructured coatings for renewable energy, green building, and consumer electronics markets, Rolith will utilize the $5 million investment to step up business development in an effort to address the current market need for industrial-scale nanostructured coatings. The US $5 million investments will also be used to expand the engineering team and further research and development.

Rolith coatings are enabled by a proprietary nanolithography system, which offers superior throughput, lower cost and higher quality compared to existing methods. The company was formed by Dr. Boris Kobrin, Prof. Mark Brongersma and Julian Zegelman in 2008.

"We are excited to lead the Series A investment in Rolith, Inc. We believe that the company's proprietary large-scale nanocoating method has great potential to become the new standard for a vast variety of industrial and consumer applications," said Aidar Kaliev, Global Head of Venture Capital at VTB Capital. "The team has an impressive track-record with several nanotech start-ups, combines Russian and US scientific backgrounds and has the necessary skills and experience to lead the company to success."

"We are very fortunate to have the support of world's leading glass producer, AGC (Asahi Glass Company) Group, and DFJ VTB Capital Aurora, a highly reputable nanotechnology investor associated with one of the major Russia's banking groups, VTB Group," said Boris Kobrin, Founder and CEO of Rolith. "This investment will allow us to scale up our nanostructuring technology to substrate areas larger than what is offered by any competitors and demonstrate feasibility of the first few of our nanostructured coatings."

"Rolith's nanostructure technology which can be applied cost effectively to large area glass could open the door for practical applications to products beyond our current imagination," said Naoki Sugimoto, General Manager of Global Technology Networking at AGC America Inc.

About DFJ VTB Capital Aurora

DFJ VTB Capital Aurora, a DFJ Global Network fund, is managed by VTB Capital. The fund is focused on backing early-stage companies developing cutting-edge proprietary technologies in material science, nanoelectronics, cleantech as well as leading start-ups in IT and Internet.

About VTB Capital

VTB Capital (www.vtbcapital.com), the Investment Business of VTB Group, is one of the three strategic business arms of VTB Group, along with the corporate and retail businesses. Since its foundation in 2008, VTB Capital has taken part in more than 235 ECM and DCM deals, which were instrumental in attracting USD 96.3bn worth of investments to Russia and CIS. VTB Capital offers a full range of investment banking products and services to Russian and international clients, focusing on arranging operations in the debt, equity, global commodities markets, developing investment and asset management, advising clients on M&A and ECM deals in Russia and abroad. VTB Capital operates in Moscow, London, Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, New York, Paris, Sofia, Kiev and Vienna, with headquarters in Moscow. VTB Capital holds top positions in the debt and equity capital markets in Russia and CIS according to the league tables for 2011 by Dealogic and Bloomberg. In 2011 VTB Capital research team was ranked #1 in Thomson Reuters Extel Survey and Institutional Investor All-Russia Investor Survey.