Digital services & Apps

After initial success in Russia, neural network-inspired apps Artisto and Prisma become international hits

Less than two months after launch, video editing mobile app Artisto has broken into the top 5 of the App Store and Google Play in the USA for the Photo & Video category. Launched in early August by Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group and its US subsidiary My.com, the app — the first of its kind — allows users to edit …

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Russian online ticket service expands to Belarus and Lithuania

This summer, Russian online ticket service Kassir.ru acquired its two counterparts — Belarusian Kvitki.by and Lithuanian Bilietai.lt — from Lithuanian BLT group, Delovoy Peterburg reported last week. The transaction amounted to €5.5 million, according to the Russian newspaper. Based in Saint Petersburg, Kassir.ru is part of the PMI media holding, which is controlled by Russian billionaire Eugene Finkelstein. …

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Google celebrates Trans-Siberian Railway

Yesterday Google dedicated its daily Doodle to the 100th Anniversary of completion of the Trans-Siberian Railway, which has “helped link a nation with the world.” Russia still depends on this railway to traverse nearly 9,300 kilometers from Moscow, Europe’s largest city, to Vladivostok, which neighbors China, Korea and Japan. “In just seven days, the railway transports travelers and …

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Dubai-based home services startup MoveSouq.com raises $3 million from Russia’s AddVenture

Dubai-based online home services marketplace MoveSouq.com has managed to capture investor attention all the way from Russia. MoveSouq has closed a US$3 million Series A funding round led by AddVenture, a Russia-based global venture capital firm. This fundraising is the startup’s third round, after seed and angel rounds in 2013 and 2015. Founded by former consultants Bana Shomali and Wim …

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Russia aims to attract foreign investors to build giant medtech cluster in North Caucasus

A giant medical technology cluster could be built in Mineralnye Vody, a city in Southern Russia, with participation from Russian and foreign private investors. The project may require an investment of 162 billion rubles (about $2.5 billion at the current exchange rate). The Russian government would contribute a quarter of this amount, or 40 billion …

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Russia begins search for decryption of online messengers

Russian companies have begun searching for ways to fully decipher intercepted messages on popular platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, the Kommersant newspaper reported Tuesday. Decryption of messages is a key provision of the recently-passed anti-terror law authored by conservative lawmaker, Irina Yarovaya. As part of the wide-ranging law, all companies providing online communication are …

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Blablacar starts to monetize in Russia

BlaBlaCar, the Paris-based global ridesharing giant, will now take a fee from passengers for every booking in Russia and neighboring countries. Since the company launched in the area in 2014, passengers had enjoyed free access to book their trips. They only had to pay cash to the driver to share riding costs. Blablacar says that its approach is to …

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Mail.ru Group launches social network and online games in Asia

Russia’s second most popular social network, Odnoklassniki.ru (Russian for “Classmates”), owned by Mail.Ru Group, has expanded to China, Iran, Iraq and Macao, Izvestia reported last week. On August 31, the network’s new Android app was launched under the OK.RU brand in these countries, the Russian newspaper learned from unnamed sources close to the company. When …

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Google and Yandex are ”key threats” to banks, says Sberbank’s CEO

The head of Russia’s biggest bank, Sberbank, has named online giants such as Google and Yandex as the ”key threats” to the company. Sberbank CEO German Gref warned that traditional banks are set to lose out as increasing amounts of money are being transferred online through services such as Facebook and Yandex Money. “The problem …

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Short-term loans: The limits of Google’s global search monopoly

In July Alphabet, the holding company that controls Google, suspended placement of contextual ads for 60-day loans in the AdWords advertising service. The announcement of this decision in May caused a storm of protest in the financial community in the USA. Commenting on the ban, the search engine refers to some research which shows that …

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Yandex eyes global car market

Yandex is following Google’s example and intends to enter the international car market. The Russian search giant doesn’t plan to create its own autonomous car like Google, but it is adapting its technologies to the needs of major car manufacturers. Thus, recently, the Yandex.Navigator service recently was built into the Toyota RAV4 Exclusive as well as a Honda car. Also, at the …

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Gett to invest $100 million in Russia this and next year

Gett, an international on-demand transportation, delivery and logistics company (previously known as Gettaxi), intends to invest no less than $100 million in the Russian market starting from this fall until the end of 2017, an unnamed company representatives told Vedomosti earlier this week. This is nearly one fifth of all the financial means raised by the company …

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