Mosventure, a fund owned by the Moscow city administration and focused on small and medium sized scientific and technical projects, plans to support up to 70 projects before the end of the year. These plans were announced last week by the fund’s executive director Alexey Kostrov in an interview with Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
The fund offers grants ranging from 500,000 to 5 million rubles, or $16,500 and $165,000, depending on maturity of the project, for both R&D and marketing purposes. The fund requires matching co-investment from entrepreneurs or a third-party investors. Among the fund’s primary criteria is the capacity of a project to create jobs and pay taxes to the Moscow budget in the future.
According to Kostrov, the fund manages several billion rubles and currently lacks projects. “Previously we steered clear of IT projects, as those we reviewed were typically clones of Western projects. Now, however, we are investing more and more in this sector, in SaaS and information systems, for example,” Kostrov noted.
The fund cooperates closely with the Ministry of Economic Development as well as with private investors, including the local Microsoft seed investment fund. The fund also finances youth entrepreneurship education programs as well as internships in the USA, Israel, China, Germany, Switzerland and other countries.
