Russia’s national savings bank Sberbank has teamed up with the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian), Russia’s largest seed and early stage venture fund.
FRII will select projects while Sberbank will provide startups with expertise and funding for pilot projects. The money will come from Sberbank itself and its venture arm SBT Venture Capital, launched in 2012.
As Russian corporations are getting more and more involved in startup innovation, Sberbank seeks to push projects in such fields as financial services, personal finance management systems, process optimization in financial institutions, loyalty programs, Big Data, etc.
Recently, FRII launched a Big Data investment program, and backed an accelerator dedicated to cybersecurity startups.
Source: Firrma.ru.
