Confirming a trend which started years ago and continued all along 2015, several venture funds with Russian backers or managers invested abroad last month, with half a dozen significant deals made public.
Thus AltaIR Capital, LETA Capital and Maxfield Capital took part in a $1.2 million seed funding round for Tel Aviv-based startup Viisights. The round was led by Israeli early-stage fund The Time.
Viisights is developing a video data management and intelligence platform which is designed specifically to monetize digital video assets. The platform’s analytics solutions allow publishers with large video content libraries to increase their revenues, while advertisers are provided with higher quality video ad targeting data.
“The monetization potential of digital video is behind display due to the shortage of high-quality ‘discoverable inventory.’ This is why publishers’ revenues are generated from a small fraction of their entire video content library. User-generated content is barely discoverable and monetized, targeting technology is limited and there are no acceptable industry standards for handling fraud and measurement,” stated Viisights CEO Asaf Birenzvieg, describing the problems which his technology aims to address.
“At the core of our technology is a smart video processing engine that extracts visual, vocal and textual metadata from the video content and execute understanding-logic (i.e. video understanding technology) to figure out what the content as a whole is about, and what each scene is about,” he added.
The funds will be used for further technology development, beta version testing and team expansion.
Social mums, cloud banking, home services
Along with unnamed international investors, AltaIR also put $1 million in Preggie, a mobile social network for expectant mums. Available on iOS and Android worldwide, the app has been developed by Russian entrepreneurs Sergey Shenderiv and Andrey Solovyev, who established their offices in Prague and San Francisco.
Meanwhile, Runa Capital participated in an €8 million funding round for German cloud banking platform Mambu, along with Acton Capital Partners and Commerz Ventures. Launched in 2011, Mambu operates in 50 countries where it claims more than 1.1 million active accounts.
A $200 million internationally-oriented fund with Russian origins, Runa had already backed the startup in two previous rounds, in 2013 and 2014. Last year the fund invested in several other fintech startups, including Lendio and LendingRobot.
Russian money also went to Homeshift, a UK marketplace that connects people with providers of household services. The startup received $575,000 from Impulse VC, a venture fund backed by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, along with BlueWire Capital, London Co-Investment Fund, and the Seedcamp accelerator. Completed in December, the transaction was disclosed in January.
Last but not least, Gawker Media, one of the largest online media group in the USA, leaked its intention to raise an undisclosed amount from Columbus Nova Technology Partners. Controlled by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, this California-based venture fund is to acquire a minority stake in the company, which is facing a costly privacy lawsuit.
Sources: LETA Capital, Rusbase.com, Firrma.ru (1 and 2).
