Every day, the Yandex.Maps app responds to more than a million search queries made in Russia. Nearly half of them are searches for various organizations: where the nearest ATM or produce stand is? what’s the fastest route to the civil records office? where a given market? church, or museum is located, etc? By looking at …
DST Global, a major global venture fund managed by Russian billionaire Yuri Milner, led a $210 million round for the Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, TechCrunch has reported. Another leading investor was the startup’s earlier backer Naspers. The round brought the company to a $1.3 billion valuation. According to CrunchBase, Swiggy has raised to date $465.5 …
DST Global leads giant round for Indian food delivery startup Read More
Mail.Ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant, and Vezet (“it’s giving a ride” or “to be in luck” in Russian), a major taxi aggregator in Russia, have inked a convertible loan agreement which is described as “part of the preparation for a new round of investment.” Neither the terms, nor the amount of the deal, which …
iGooods, a Saint Petersburg supermarket delivery service, has attracted 123 million rubles (roughly $1.9 million at the current exchange rate) in exchange for a 24.6% stake in the company. The news was reported by Russian business daily Vedomosti this Monday. The investors included Moscow-based venture fund SOL Ventures, ex-partners at the venture fund Quadriga Capital Russia, …
Russian supermarket delivery service attracts $1.9 million from local investors Read More
CardsMobile, a developer of contactless payment solutions, including mobile app ‘The Wallet,’ has raised an undisclosed amount in investment from Alfa Bank, a leading Russian commercial bank, in exchange for a 25% stake. The funding will be used to develop further the app, which allows consumers to save all their loyalty, bank and transport cards in …
Alfa Bank invests in CardsMobile to “fully correspond to the digital future” Read More
Last week Yandex.Taxi, the taxi service of Russia’s tech giant Yandex – which merged with Uber’s delivery businesses in Russia and neighboring countries earlier this year – announced its launch in Tallinn, Estonia. “Estonia became the 10th country, and the second country in the EU, where we launched activities,” Yandex.Taxi press office representative Natalia Zhuravlova …
From the Baltics to Mexico, Russian taxi-hailing services go global Read More
The popular messaging app brought in so much money from a small group of private investors that it is calling off a planned sale of cryptocurrency to the wider investing public, according to a person familiar with the matter. Telegram Group Inc. has pulled in $1.7 billion by selling newly created cryptocurrency to fewer than …
Telegram calls off public token sale after raising $1.7 billion in private pre-sale Read More
Confirming the appeal of eSports projects, Russian startup Learn 2 Play announced earlier this week that it raised nearly $1.1 million from a pool of venture funds and business angels. These investors, who have received a minority stake, include VC funds Buran and ru-Net, Anton Inshutin (InVentures Partners), Jarom Severson (Chess.com), Erik Allebest (Chess.com) and Lev …
eSports startup Learn 2 Play agrees up to $3 million investment plan with VCs and angels Read More
On April 23, Russian Internet users reported mass disruptions to almost all services offered by Google — from the main search engine to the company’s reCAPTCHA (which distinguishes human users from bots). The outages started after Russia’s federal censor added another 118 Google IP addresses to the country’s Internet blacklist over the weekend. After a wave …
Russia’s crackdown on Telegram disrupts Google services across the country Read More
The official reason for banning Telegram in Russia – its refusal to let the secret service decipher user messages, as required by Russian law, to “prevent terrorism” – might not be the real one. Revealed today by the Russian business daily RBC, an informal note written by an employee of the Federal Security Service (FSB), …
Last week, just four months after telemedicine became legal in Russia, Mail.Ru Group, the LSE-listed Russian Internet giant, announced the launch of an online pharmacy. Dubbed ‘All Pharmacies,’ the aggregator allows users to find and order any prescription drug or medical product — anything you can buy at an ordinary pharmacy — at the best …
A few days before the Russian authorities started blocking access to Telegram, advertisements for another chat app started appearing in major Russian newspapers and even on several Telegram channels. The service, dubbed ‘TamTam,’ touts itself as a “complete copy of Telegram” and “another messenger with channels,” positioning itself to replace Telegram in Russia. TamTam is owned …
Mail.Ru’s TamTam positions itself to replace Telegram in Russia Read More
