The ‘Fund for Technological Investments,’ a newly registered startup investment vehicle, made the news in Russia last week. This was due neither to any impressive investment capacity (just around 3 million rubles, or $40,000, per deal), nor to any special investment thesis. What is less common is the identity of one the instigators of this fund: alleged Putin daughter Katerina Tikhonova.
This 35-year-old woman, a former acrobatic dancer, heads non-profit Innopraktika. An innovation hub connected with top Moscow university MSU (MGU), Innopraktika is sometimes regarded as competing with Skolkovo. It received controversial funding from top Russian state corporations, whose CEOs have a seat on its supervisory board. According to media reports, Tikhonova also heads two affiliated organizations: the Center of the National Intellectual Reserve and the Institute of Prospective Studies of Artificial Intelligence and Intellectual Systems.
While little information was make public on Tikhnova’s latest initiative, the Russian media reported a series of other fund launches having taken place lately:
- Digital Horizon, a London-based VC firm founded by Gazprombank executive Alan Vaksman, announced the launch of a second fund with a $200 million target. The firm claims a 40% yearly return for its first fund, launched in 2018. Both funds target fintech and SaaS startups, essentially in Europe and Israel. Digital Horizon’s latest investment went to Obligo an Israeli startup which has develops an innovative approach to rental security deposits.
- Moscow-based Leta Capital launched its $100 million fund, announced earlier this year, targeting Eastern European founders of tech startups across the world. As reported by East-West Digital News, this is a huge pool of talents who left their home countries — including Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and some other former Soviet republics — to establish themselves in Western Europe, the USA and other geographies.
- Maximize Capital, a tech investment firm founded earlier this year (based in Moscow and New York), launched a $30 million pre-IPO fund in addition to its initial venture investment business. Maximize Capital makes international tech investment opportunities accessible to retail investors. Itreportedlyinvests small tickets (typically $50,000); it already claims 14 investments and 9 exits.
- MTS, a major mobile operator, will reportedly will double the size of its corporate fund, adding another 1 billion rubles ($13.8 million at the current exchange rate) to its capital. Launched in 2019; this corporate venture vehicle has already invested half of its initial capital (500 million rubles) in several companies including Coinkeeper and, most recently, TalkBank. In a separate move two months ago, MTS launched an even larger ($100 million) vehicle for investment in artificial intelligence.
- Tinkoff Capital, a component of the Tinkoff digital finance ecosystem, announced it had set up three new exchange-traded funds, one of them being dedicated to investments in the field of cybersecurity. Dubbed ‘Tinkoff Cybersecurity Fund,’ this ETF tracks the ‘Tinkoff Cybersecurity Total Return Index USD‘, which includes 31 publicly traded companies from the USA, Israel and India. Thus, the fund invested in such companies as McAfee, Cisco, Zscaler and others.
