As a busy year draws to a close, RusBase has asked 10 Russian venture capitalists what they think were the most important events of 2014.
- Andrey Romanenko, Run Capital: “Considering that Run Capital was only founded in April, we think this year was a successful one. The most important event for us was our $6 million investment in AppInTop. We see a huge amount of potential in the mobile advertising market, and are 100% behind the project, its founder, and its team.”
Run Capital is a 1-billion ruble fund (approximately $17 million at the current exchange rate) launched this past spring by executives from Qiwi, a major Russian payment company.
- Victor Osyka, Almaz Capital: “Venture funds exist in order to make profits for their investors, and to achieve this they have to make exits from their investments. Thus we are delighted with to have made yet another successful exit with the acquisition of our portfolio company nScaled by Acronis. Acronis is a Russian company which sells backup software globally, and nScaled fits perfectly into the firm’s profile. This is Almaz Capital’s fourth exit after the sale of video messaging service Qik, Vyatta and Yandex’s public offering.”
Almaz Capital is a venture fund operating globally from its Moscow and Silicon Valley offices.
- Andrey Malafeev, Bright Capital: “This year Bright Capital has been involved in several deals, all of which went very well. However, I would describe the year’s most important outcome as the strengthening of our portfolio companies’ investors. In August, Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia, became a shareholder in Siluria, a startup which is developing technology for the efficient conversion of natural gas into ethylene. In December, Solidia, which is developing technology for the utilisation of CO2 in the production of high quality construction materials, attracted a number of new heavyweight shareholders, such as Lafarge, a world leader in the production of construction materials, and Total Energy Ventures. This is a testament to the fact that we are nurturing industry champions who are in demand both in terms of the market and investors, and it is only a matter of a few years before these companies will be receiving valuations of billions of dollars.”
Bright Capital is an internationally-oriented Russian management company.
- Ilya Balandin, iTech Capital: “We would like to mention our $10 million investment in AviaSales in February. This deal won us ‘Deal of the year’ at the Venture Awards. We expect to increase the company’s growth through synergy with our other assets in the online marketing and ticketing sectors.”
iTech Capital is a major Russian PE & VC fund.
- Ekaterina Sedinina, inMedia: “For us the most important event of this year was the acquisition of INTECH. The company, which initially specialised in value-added services for network operators, is now becoming one of the leading developers of programming and hardware solutions in the innovation sectors, from the internet of things to mobile commerce and advertising.”
inMedia is a Russian private holding company targeting promising ideas in the field of internet technology, communication and advertising.
- Alena Sokova, Promsvyazbank Venture Fund: “This year our venture fund financed 17 young entrepreneurs. We are proud that in spite of a deteriorating economic climate practically all of these projects are developing in accordance with their business plans. In fact, some of them are even outperforming their projected financial targets. I would like to give a special mention to the ‘Shokoladnitsa’, café franchise in Kursk, Velodrive in St Petersburg, and Begemot, in Ulan-Ude. In making decisions about investing in this or that project, our experts consider a number of factors, and the success of the business ideas we have financed is proof of our fund’s well-chosen strategy.”
The Promsvyazbank Venture Fund is a joint project of Promsvyazbank, a major Russian bank, and OPERA to support young entrepreneurs mainly from traditional sectors.
- Vladislav Solodky, Life.SREDA: “If we were to look back, then the year’s biggest success would clearly be the sale of American mobile bank Simple.com to Spanish finance group BBVA for $117 million. But we always look to the future, so our for me personally this year’s best outcome has been the rapid growth of LifePay, the important decision to turn down a number of offers for it, and its promising plans for 2015 to develop its product range and to break into a new market.”
Life.SREDA, the venture arm of Russian finance group Life, focuses on mobile and Internet fin tech projects.
- Olga Turzhanskaya, Qiwi Venture: “This has been an extremely busy and interesting year for Qiwi Venture. The key events for us were the opening of our own accelerator and our series of ‘hackathons’. We weren’t immediately completely convinced about this entirely new way of working with our entrepreneurs, but now that we have seen the results, we can say without any doubt that we are delighted. Nine excellent projects received investment from us, and four of them are preparing for pilot launches. This has been Qiwi Venture’s biggest intake since the fund was created, so they main lesson we will take from 2014 is not to be afraid of taking a risk by doing something new.”
Launched in 2013, QIWI Venture is the corporate venture department of the QIWI group, a leading Russian payment operator.
- Kirill Varlamov, FRII: The greatest outcome from this year for the FRII is our portfolio of more than 120 startups, as well as the results of research by Dow Jones demonstrating that we are Europe’s most active seed fund.
The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) is a $200 million government-backed fund launched last year to support Russian Internet startups.
- Sergei Fradkov, iDeal Machine: A major landmark for us was agreeing a partnership deal with the FRII to hold joint acceleration sessions in St Petersburg. It was nice to receive recognition from the FRII of what our accelerator can offer its startups, and we hope that together we can nurture lots of successful companies in our region.”
Based in St. Petersburg, iDealMachine is an early stage venture fund and a mentorship-driven startup incubator.
- Aleksey Kostrov, Moscow Seed Fund: “For us the year’s most important outcome was seeing the first returns from companies we had invested in. This is proof of the fact that the Moscow Seed Fund is working.”
Moscow Seed Fund is the venture arm of the Moscow city authorities.
- Renat Batyrov, Skolkovo Foundation: “The success of our bid to hold the 2016 IASP conference in Moscow has to be the stand out achievement of the year not just for Skolkovo, but for all of Russia. Representatives of the entire world of global innovation will meet in Moscow. It will be like the Olympics, or the World Cup, only for the innovation sector.”
Skolkovo is an international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow.
