Crunchbase and East-West Digital News are teaming up to cover key tech and venture trends from Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, with a quarterly review by EWDN Chief Editor Adrien Henni highlighting the most notable industry facts and trends across the region. More than with tech innovations, Russia made the news this past summer by staging …
Admitad, an international affiliate network with Russian roots, announced two acquisitions this month, targeting Russian startups CheckScan and Pampadu. The previous has developed a QR code scanner for receipts that allows customers to analyze their spending and compare prices across various outlets. CheckScan claims to processes over 2 million receipts a day, serving “hundreds of thousands of consumers” across the …
Adtech major Admitad buys two Russian startups, opens US office to “expand aggressively” Read More
Last week Jelastic, a multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) company established in Silicon Valley with Russian and Ukrainian roots, announced its acquisition by Seattle-based Virtuozzo. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Jelastic’s cloud services combine platform and container capacities in a single package for hosting providers, enterprises and developers. Virtuozzo is a leader in virtualization and hyperconverged software: its …
Russian and Ukrainian roots, US exit: Jelastic acquired by Virtuozzo Read More
Russian tech giant Yandex is expanding its mobility footprint in Israel with the acquisition of shared e-scooter company Wind’s Israeli operations. The two are not sharing the terms of the deal, but Israeli financial newspaper Globes reported that it is estimated to have cost $40 million to $50 million. Wind is one of the top e-scooter sharing …
Yandex acquires Wind’s Israeli e-scooter operations Read More
Mail.ru Group’s appetite for acquisitions in the gaming space was confirmed again today as My.Games Venture Capital (MGVC), the investment arm of its subsidiary My.Games, announced minority investments in three game studios. These are Tworogue Games and VOX, based in Moscow, and Wideview Games from Minsk, Belarus. MGVC put on the table $3 million in total for these deals, which include options to …
Mail.ru Group pursues gaming acquisitions across Russia and Belarus Read More
In late September Embracer Group AB, a major Swedish developer and publisher of PC, console and mobile games for the global market, announced the full acquisition of Russian Bytex. Founded in 2004 and based in Saransk (650 km east of Moscow), Bitex is a quality assurance (QA) studio focusing on games and B2B web portals. …
Swedish Embracer Group buys Russian game QA studio Bytex Read More
Russian consumer electronics major M.Video-Eldorado Group announces today the full acquisition of online lending platform Direct Credit as part of its strategy to develop its “promising fintech business.” The transaction amounted to 1.3 billion rubles (nearly $18 million at the current exchange rate). Direct Credit services will be integrated into in the group’s fast-growing OneRetail platform, both online …
Softline, an international solution and service provider with Russian roots, is pursuing its international expansion with two deals announced this month, ahead of a potential London IPO. The group announced it acquired the licensing business of Squalio, an international data technology company, in the Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Belarus Belarus and Estonia. Founded in 1997 in Latvia, Squalio has representative …
Russian Softline pursues international expansion in Baltic states, Belarus, Egypt Read More
HelloFresh, the Germany-based international meal kit giant, has acquired an “approximately 10% stake” in its Russian counterpart Chefmarket. The amount of this investment (a capital injection) was not disclosed, but the companies mentioned a “single-digit million euro figure” in their announcement last week. The deal is touted as “a strategic step for HelloFresh to tap into an emerging market with significant growth potential,” …
Global meal kit delivery giant HelloFresh invests in Russian counterpart Chefmarket Read More
Yandex has struck a $1 billion deal to buy out U.S. ride-hailing giant Uber from a host of the pair’s joint ventures in Russia, the company announced Tuesday. Yandex and Uber first combined their ride-hailing businesses in 2017, with a deal to merge their operations in Russia and a number of other ex-Soviet countries. This partnership has seen the pair cement …
Yandex buys Uber out of food delivery partnership in $1 billion deal Read More
Nexters, one of the most successful Russian-founded game development companies, is going public today through a merger with special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Kismet. The company is traded on the NASDAQ under the new ticker symbols “GDEV” (ordinary shares) and “GDEVW” (warrants). The Kismet SPAC which just merged with Nexters closed its $250 million NASDAQ IPO in …
A SPAC with Russian flavors: Nexters and Kismet complete merger Read More
MTS, a leading mobile operator and provider of digital services and content, has acquired a 51% stake in blockchain-based trade finance platform Factorin. The two year-old company touts itself as “the biggest factoring platform in Russia andone of the leading B2B blockchain systems for trade finance in the world.” Founded by Andrei Maklin with support from venture builder Digital Horizon — …
Russian mobile major MTS acquires blockchain trade finance platform Read More
