The Microsoft Russia Seed Fund has recently disbursed $140,000 in grants to four Russian startups, bringing the total number of young Russian tech companies it has backed to 35.
Last week, Moscow’s AdWired received $50,000 to continue developing its mobile advertising platform. Minutta, a service from Orel, in Central Russia, which has been developing an app to create online video slide shows and animations, got a $30,000 grant. Both startups are residents of API Moscow, a recently launched business incubator in the Russian capital which is now officially partnering with Microsoft.
Two other starutups: WinkCam, from Siberia’s Novosibirsk, a developer of motion recognition technology for mobile and portable devices; and another Moscow-based team, KidErudite, which offers mobile learning software for preschool children, each received $30,000.
Set up three years ago, the Microsoft Russia Seed Fund has already provided $1.36 million worth of financial support for 35 startups and has plans to back another 60 or 70 technology companies between now and 2020.
Examples of its grant funding activity include, but are not limited to: Choister, a real estate search system developer that launched its pilot version a year ago; RealSpeaker, a startup from Kazan, Tatarstan, which offers a new approach to speech recognition; MoosCool, an artist promotion platform enabling composers of electronic dance music to earn money from their works; and Appercode, a Novosibirsk-based startup whose flexible platform for the simultaneous development of mobile apps for a range of operating systems won the first prize earlier this month at BIT, Russia’s largest competition of technology teams and business plans.
Source: Microsoft Russia
