Yesterday Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant, announced a binding agreement to fully acquire Muzlab, a leader in the Russian B2B audio streaming market. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed, but industry publication VC.RU heard it was between 500 million rubles ($6.5 million) and 1 billion rubles ($13 million at the current exchange rate). Muzlab has developed a …
Last week Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian digital giant, announced a novelty in the field of image-to-text and automated translation technologies. Its browser, Yandex Browser, is now capable of translating text embedded within images “from 47 languages,” says the company, touting the feature as a world’s first for a desktop browser. “Now users can easily translate and read [an] image that contain text …
Yandex Browser translates texts in images from 47 languages Read More
X5 Retail Group, a leading Russian food retailer listed on the Moscow and London stock exchanges, has acquired a dark kitchen company called Mnogo Lososya (‘A Lot of Salmon’). The group’s head Igor Shekhterman revealed the transaction earlier this week in a media interview, without providing any financial details. “While we see great potential in this business, we didn’t have …
Wildberries, the number one Russian e-commerce company, is making its first steps on the US market with dedicated versions of its website and mobile app. The site’s URL, us.wildberries.ru, betrays its Russian origin, while no US suppliers have been onboarded for the moment, as reported by Kommersant. Deliveries will be carried out from Russian warehouses with the help …
Russian e-commerce leader makes first steps on US market Read More
On the night of April 8, Moscow rescuers found a woman sitting on a brick of ice in the Moscow (Moskva) River, 30 meters from the shore. The victim, born in 1995, showed signs of hypothermia and was hospitalized. She could not explain the reason for being on the ice. Following this incident, the Traffic …
Moscow river transport monitoring system trained to recognize people in water Read More
A new fund is emerging on the tiny Russian venture scene. With $50 million in capital, ‘The Games Fund’ is the brainchild of Maria Kochmola and Ilya Eremeev, two former executives from My Games Venture Capital (MGVC), Forbes Russia reports. Former Riot Games CTO Sergey Titov, alongside ex-top managers from GEM Capital, are also part of the …
New $50 million fund to invest in gaming across Eastern Europe Read More
Ozon, a NASDAQ-listed Russian e-commerce major, announced today an agreement with Sovcombank to acquire Oney Bank. This cash transaction is still subject to regulatory approval; its exact amount , which should “not exceed $10 million,” will be determined at closing, Through this deal, Ozon is acquiring the licenses required to develop its offering of financial services around its marketplace. …
Ozon to acquire Oney Bank to enhance financial service offerings Read More
Sber (previously know as Sberbank) is demonstrating once again its ambitions in the field of e-commerce with the acquisition of SaaS provider InSales, which was announced yesterday. The state-controlled financial and digital giant has agreed to acquire an 80% stake in InSales for an undisclosed amount. The rest of the shares will remain in the hands …
Sber acquires InSales to help Russian SMEs sell online Read More
In late March Moscow startup Briskly raised $3 million from Maxim Poletaev and Gauss Ventures alongside two unnamed new investors. Poletaev, a former Sber executive, and Gauss, a Cayman-based fund with Russian connections, backed Briskly from the very beginning, with a $370,000 injection in 2019. The deal came just five months after a previous $2 million round — and is preceding a new …
Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant, and RVC (Russian Venture Company, now affiliated to the sovereign wealth fund RDIF) yesterday announced plans to launch a joint $100 million fund for early-stage tech startups. This is a substantial amount for Russia, where annual domestic venture investment volumes are in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. The fund will …
A Moscow court has fined TikTok 2.6 million rubles (some $34,000 at the current exchange rate) for refusing to delete information encouraging teenagers to join an unauthorized street protest in Moscow on January 24, TASS reported. At that time, Russian social network aficionados, including millions of teenagers, had transformed TikTok into a digital rebellion hotspot. “Navalny stay alive,” “Putin’s …
TikTok fined $34,000 for not removing posts on unauthorized street protests in Moscow Read More
In late March Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant previously known as Sberbank, took control of a Russian video creation startup called Movika. Sber announced its subsidiary Digital Assets acquired a 58% stake in Movika and could increase it to 80% in the future. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Movika’s technology allows …
