Wowworks, a Moscow-based startup providing corporate clients with a variety of maintenance services, has raised $3.6 million from three VCs: AddVenture, one of the most established VC firms with Russian roots; DV Capital, a recently-founded, Moscow-based VC firm; and LVL1, a vehicle of Russian-Israeli tech investor Lev Leviev. Back in 2017, the startup already secured $1 million from …
As reported by business daily Vedomosti, the Dutch fund Rabo Frontier Ventures and the Greek fund VentureFriends have been the main contributors to a $5 million of funding for Russian agritech startup Agro.Club. Neither the respective contributions of the investors nor the terms of the deals were disclosed. Founded in 2018, Agro.Club is a digital marketplace that …
Dutch and Greek investors back Russian startup Agro.Club for international expansion Read More
Yandex Self-Driving Group, the Yandex spin-off dedicated to unmanned vehicles, has teamed up with Grubhub to develop driverless food deliveries on college campuses in the United States. Partnering with more than 250 college campuses, Grubhub is a major online and mobile food-ordering and delivery platform in the US. The Russian company and its new US partner say these …
Yandex to operate driverless food deliveries on US college campuses Read More
Update July 9: Yandex announced the cancellation of the deal, for undisclosed reasons, according to media reports. The company is considering “other options to enter the fashion segment.” Yandex.Market is in the process of acquiring KupiVIP, one of the most established e-commerce brands in Russia, founded back in 2008 by German entrepreneur Oskar Hartmann. Also …
Glorious story but modest exit for online fashion pioneer KupiVIP Read More
The Russian VC firm Leta Capital aims to invest in Russian-speaking tech entrepreneurs across the world. 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. According to Leta Capital’s in-house research, “more …
Leta Capital eyes “17,000 Russian-speaking tech entrepreneurs” based in the West Read More
Children and teenagers from some 80 countries are taking part in the Artificial Intelligence International Junior Contest (AIIJC). Russia, India, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and Bangladesh account for the largest cohorts of participants, but the Philippines, Canada, Ecuador and a variety of other countries are also involved. This first-of-its-kind competition is organized jointly by Sber, Russia’s state-controlled financial and …
Russian digital majors invite children from across the world to AI contest Read More
Russia’s largest online retailer Wildberries has launched direct cross-border sales from Belarus, Kazakhstan and China to Russian consumers, the company announced on June 23, presenting the move as a pilot project. Cross-border delivery of goods will be carried out both by Wildberries’ own logistics service (for example, in Belarus and Kazakhstan) and via international logistics partners (in …
Wildberries launches cross-border sales to Russian consumers Read More
A group of Russian entrepreneurs has raised $46 million to launch a food delivery company on the US market. Dubbed ‘Buyk,’ the service is an analog of Samokat, a successful startup which was born in St. Petersburg and acquired last year by Mail.ru Group and Sber. Buyk is the brainchild of Samokat co-founders Vyacheslav Bocharov …
Russian entrepreneurs raise $46 million to launch express delivery service in the US Read More
M.Video, a part of the M.Video–Eldorado consumer electronics retail group, now processes nearly half of customer calls via a virtual assistant called ‘Alyona.’ “Voice processing technologies have enabled [us] to reduce the workload of [our] contact center staff, reduce response times and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty,” the company says. The AI-based robotic customer support system …
M.Video uses high tech to automate CRM, raise service level and track employee attendance Read More
Liqvid, a Russian startup registered in Singapore, has launched an online service for small business outlets to manage content on POS screens. “In just a few clicks,” shop owners can easily set up broadcasting, download content in any format, create promotional materials — from offers of the day to discounts, — display this content to …
Russian-Singaporean startup helps shop owners manage POS screens with just a smartphone Read More
StartupBlink has just released the 2021 edition of its Startup Ecosystem Rankings Report, which encompasses 1,000 cities and 100 countries across the world. Unsurprisingly, the US leads the country ranking, far ahead of any other country. Then come the UK, Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden — immediately followed by China. Ranked 7th, China has blazed its way …
StartupBlink: Moscow city ranks #2 in Europe for startup ecosystem development Read More
Earlier this month Sber, the state-controlled financial and technology giant (previously known as Sberbank), announced the full acquisition of Jivo. This Russian startup — which has legal entities both in Russia and in Delaware — has developed an omnichannel application for customer support and online sales. Jivo’s solution combines a chat function for websites with …
Sber acquires CRM startup Jivo for reportedly more than $20 million Read More
