In early August, the App Store updated its Made in Russia section. Russian developers’ applications are often highly regarded. There is a special App Store catalogue listing them. But not all applications in the App Store collection originated in Russia. Formally, some of them were created by Russian companies’ offices abroad. The bulk of the …
UberX, the budget version of US-based taxi-hailing service Uber, has arrived in Moscow. Residents of the Russian capital can now travel in an UberX vehicle for just $0.15 per minute / per km, in addition to an initial $1.20 charge. This is significantly less than the $0.40 per minute charge + $5 initial charge to use …
Just five years ago, a movie goer may arrive at a Russian movie theatre to watch whatever movie was playing at the time. While anything playing in theaters was advertised in advance, the movie playing at a given time was subject to change. Since then, movie showtimes acquired a much stricter and more consistent schedule. Moreover, Internet …
Yandex.Afisha transforms Russians’ movie theater experience Read More
Translation apps on mobile devices are extremely helpful when people are travelling to countries where they don’t speak local language. However, most of translation apps have been working only over the internet, and their use might be quite paintful when in roaming with no good wi-fi connection abroad. Yandex.Translate, an app launched two years ago, now …
Yandex.Translate on iPhone and iPad translates offline Read More
Yandex, the Russian search giant, has purchased mobile development company Any Void. The Any Void team, along with its head Yury Podorozhny will start work at Yandex from today. They will be responsible for the company’s Geo services. When asked why it had chosen to buy Any Void above the many other teams of developers …
Action Media Group, a large Russian B2B-publishing house, has invested $200,000 in SaaS service Arnica.pro. This is already the third round of investment for the company. Arnica.pro is aimed at smaller beauty salons, who can use the software for client registration, staff work schedules, CRM, transactions, accounts and integration with external services. The company was founded …
Action Media Group invests $200,000 in SaaS service Arnica.pro Read More
In a series on Europe’s “hottest startups,” the UK edition of tech magazine Wired published earlier this month a selection of 10 Russian startups. These included peer-to-peer publishing platform Gitoon, e-commerce intelligence platform Ometria, “rephotography” app publisher Timera, slideshow assistant app Penxy, music-streaming service 10tracks, taxi app publisher Wheely, driving navigational system WayRay, video game …
Wired highlights 10 Russian startups but gets it wrong with rosy business predictions Read More
Asserting itself as one of the most active Russian-backed funds operating internationally, TMT Investments announced during this month the completion of two investment deals, in addition to a small exit. The fund, which usually invests just a few hundred thousand USD in each project, has injected a hefty $1 million in Anews, an international global news-reading …
The Ukrainian authorities may block Russian web resources which they believe to be responsible for propaganda, as well as those linked to the Donbass insurgency. “At the moment we are working at both the legal and technical level in order to follow the examples of Israel, America and China, closing down sites which pose a …
Russian music-streaming platform Zvooq yesterday announced it secured an investment of $20 million in a Series A round led by Ulmart, Russia’s leading online retailer, with the participation of Essedel Capital, a Helsinki-based private equity fund. The funds will be used to bolster and promote Zvooq’s freemium music-streaming offer. Zvooq will also “initiate roll-out of the …
Life.SREDA, a Moscow-based venture capital firm focusing on mobile and online fintech startups, is to invest $1.5 million in Settle, a mobile payment service developed by Kiev-based startup Advice Wallet. Combining mobile payments and a loyalty scheme in one app, Settle makes it possible to both order and then pay your bill at a restaurant or café through a smartphone. …
Ukrainian startup Advice Wallet secures $1.5 million from Russia’s Life.SREDA Read More
Coub.com, a Moscow-based startup launched in 2012, has just raised $2.5 million in a Series B round from Vaizra Capital, a fund which belongs to VKontakte co-founders Vyacheslav Mirilashvili and Lev Leviev. The startup did not disclose its valuation, but its representative told the Russian business daily Vedomosti that Vaizra got a minority stake. Coub is …
