The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian), Russia’s largest seed and early stage venture fund, intends to invest 500 million rubles (approximately $7.7 million at the current exchange rate) in Big Data projects.
FRII will support a few dozen projects, taking into account the needs of large Russian corporations, Russian business daily Vedomosti reported yesterday, referring to an exchange with a fund representative.
The fund also intends to create a big data laboratory to assist these startups in their technological development, recruitment, technical and software equipment tasks.
Several Russian investors and industry players have shown interest in Big Data recently. Among the most noticeable moves was Microsoft’s commitment last year to invest $1 million in computer vision and Big data research in partnership with a Moscow university.
In March 2015 two Moscow-based venture funds, Leta Capital and Simile Venture Partners, invested nearly $3 milllion in Double Data, a Russian startup developing Big Data solutions for financial institutions.
In December 2014 Yandex, the Russian search giant, launched Yandex Data Factory, an international project to provide custom-made big data solutions to companies both in Russia and worldwide.
More recently in the Lower Volga area the Samara State Aerospace University (SSAU) set up a laboratory to process Big Data for a wide range of sectors, using its own hardware and software solutions.
