The Skolkovo Foundation will set up three venture capital funds to provide additional sources of funding for startups, said its president Victor Vekselberg in late October at the Open Innovations forum.
Funded by the Russian government, the Skolkovo Foundation manages the completion of an international tech hub on the outskirts of Moscow.
“Now we’re creating a daughter structure of the Skolkovo Foundation that will manage the venture funds. The plan is to set up three funds specializing, respectively, in IT, medicine and industrial projects,” Vekselberg said.
The first fund will be set up together with state-backed fund of funds RVC, while the other two will be set up with other partners, said Vekselberg.
Currently, startups with resident status at the Skolkovo Foundation can obtain grants for research and development, so long as they can raise the same amount themselves in private investment. Until now, there has been no system under which Skolkovo would make an investment in a company in exchange for a stake in it.
Vekselberg also announced a new expansion of Skolkovo in the regions.
“Today in Russia there are places where the level of development of innovative projects is extremely high: St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Tatarstan and the Urals,” believes Skolkovo’s president.
“We’re prepared to teach others, to transfer our technologies and all our communication network, so that you don’t need to move to Moscow to work. We have drawn up a proposal along these lines and sent it to the government, and we are counting on it being accepted,” said Vekselberg.
About a third of Skolkovo’s 1,500 resident startups are based in the regions.
Last year Skolkovo opened a new branch in Russia’s Far East.
