M&A

Nexters acquires gaming studios, Rostelecom eyes cloud gaming company

February 7, 2022

Last week Nexters — a Russian-founded gaming company which went public on the Nasdaq last summer by merging with a SPAC — announced a series of acquisition and investment deals. With a total upfront investment of around $100 million, Nexters will take control of three game studios:  RJ Games (Russia), a puzzle RPG major and the publisher of Puzzle Breakers; Royal Ark (Russia), …

Nexters acquires gaming studios, Rostelecom eyes cloud gaming company Read More

Russia’s e-commerce leader Wildberries bought a bank to launch virtual debit card and instant refund

January 27, 2022

Wildberries has just launched its first financial product — a virtual debit card that allows its customers to make purchases on the marketplace with a 2% discount. The news was reported earlier this week by RB.RU, which cited  the company’s press service.  Only users with a Wildberries account can get the ‘WB Card,’ which is provided at …

Russia’s e-commerce leader Wildberries bought a bank to launch virtual debit card and instant refund Read More

From London, to Switzerland, to India, Russian entrepreneurs and investors push fintech innovation

February 11, 2022

Last week, as reported by Reuters, TCS Group — the owner of Russian digital banking giant Tinkoff — took control of Swiss crypto service company Aximetria as part of its international expansion strategy. Founded by Russian serial entrepreneur Alex Axelrod in 2018, this startup has developed a SaaS platform to provide “seamless interconnection for any form of money: fiat, crypto and …

From London, to Switzerland, to India, Russian entrepreneurs and investors push fintech innovation Read More

Yandex wants make online marketing tools more accessible to musicians and small entrepreneurs

January 23, 2022

Yandex announced almost simultaneously — yesterday and today — two acquisitions. The NASDAQ-listed Russian digital giant is absorbing BandLink, a service for musicians, podcasters and labels to create micro sites, the news agency TASS reports. BandLink helps them promote their releases and concerts (including with personalised links for social media), analyze audiences and identify their …

Yandex wants make online marketing tools more accessible to musicians and small entrepreneurs Read More

Russian retail major Lenta to buy e-grocery pioneer Utkonos as local market could reach $13 billion by 2025

February 7, 2022

Last week Lenta announced an agreement to acquire online-retailer Utkonos from Severgroup. The parties expect to complete the transaction in February 2022.  A major Russian retail group listed in both Moscow and London, Lenta aims to “create a leading e-grocery platform covering all key shopping missions and market segments.” Lenta will also “significantly expand its online …

Russian retail major Lenta to buy e-grocery pioneer Utkonos as local market could reach $13 billion by 2025 Read More

MTS acquires Russian-founded biometrics provider VisionLabs

December 15, 2021

Intema, the AI accelerator and venture fund launched by mobile operator MTS this past September, is set to acquire biometrics firm VisionLabs for 7 billion rubles ($95 million at the current exchange rate). Founded in Russia in 2012, this developer of AI-powered computer vision solutions quickly drew the attention of top global digital players. Sber (at that time ‘Sberbank’) invested in the company in …

MTS acquires Russian-founded biometrics provider VisionLabs Read More

VK ownership changes have both political and business motives, say Russian pundits

December 8, 2021

While the restructure in VK (ex-Mail.ru Group)’s ownership announced last week is making the Kremlin’s control over Russian social media even stronger, business motives are also involved, believe insiders.  As reported by The Bell, Sogaz is said to be the real managing partner here, even though technically speaking, the new ownership structure at VK is a diarchy with …

VK ownership changes have both political and business motives, say Russian pundits Read More

Russian state strengthens control over leading Internet group VK

December 3, 2021

Russia’s Gazprom is gaining control of VK Company, the LSE-listed Russian Internet major (previously known as Mail.ru Group), as a result of a string of deals to buy out Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov from the company. These transactions will increase state control over the group, which owns in particular the country’s leading social networks Vkontakte …

Russian state strengthens control over leading Internet group VK Read More

Russian digital banking giant Tinkoff acquires payment automation service Jump.Finance

November 26, 2021

Tinkoff, the Russian digital banking giant, has taken control of Just Look, the company behind the Jump.Finance payment automation service. Tinkoff purchased a 51% stake under undisclosed terms. Founded in 2017 by Anton Kirillov (CEO) and Mikhail Kirchenko (CTO), Jump.Finance has asserted itself as a major provider of payment automation software for taxi fleets, car dealers, delivery companies, scrap collector …

Russian digital banking giant Tinkoff acquires payment automation service Jump.Finance Read More

VK acquires edtech businesses in Russia and Brazil

November 25, 2021

In the past few months, Russian Internet major VK (previously Mail.ru Group) demonstrated a strong appetite for online education — both in Russia and abroad.   In August the group, partnering with Alexander Galitsky, integrated its properties Skillbox and GeekBrains into a holding called Skillbox Limited. In October, VK completed the move by merging SkillFactory, …

VK acquires edtech businesses in Russia and Brazil Read More

Russian-founded incident management tool Amixr acquired by US major Grafana Labs

November 12, 2021

US open source software platform Grafana Labs has acquired a Russian-founded startup called Amixr. Launched in 2019, this company has developed an incident management platform that allows DevOps and SRE engineers to “optimize channels, recipients, and content” and solve IT problems more rapidly.   Grafana Labs provides a monitoring solution for databases, featuring “beautiful, flexible dashboards” to “create, explore and …

Russian-founded incident management tool Amixr acquired by US major Grafana Labs Read More

Kaspersky acquires SDN/NFV software vendor Brain4Net to boost its cloud security business

December 1, 2021

In late October Kaspersky Lab announced the acquisition of Brain4Net, an SD-WAN and NFV orchestration software developer born in Russia in 2015. “We’re going to significantly boost our cloud security capabilities and XDR offering. The acquisition enables us to develop reliable detection and response capabilities in the ‘cloud-first’ paradigm by delivering our own solutions based …

Kaspersky acquires SDN/NFV software vendor Brain4Net to boost its cloud security business Read More

Scroll to Top

This site is under maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience.

This site is under maintenance. Sorry for the inconvenience.