In late March Moscow startup Briskly raised $3 million from Maxim Poletaev and Gauss Ventures alongside two unnamed new investors. Poletaev, a former Sber executive, and Gauss, a Cayman-based fund with Russian connections, backed Briskly from the very beginning, with a $370,000 injection in 2019. The deal came just five months after a previous $2 million round — and is preceding a new …
Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant, and RVC (Russian Venture Company, now affiliated to the sovereign wealth fund RDIF) yesterday announced plans to launch a joint $100 million fund for early-stage tech startups. This is a substantial amount for Russia, where annual domestic venture investment volumes are in the hundreds of millions of US dollars. The fund will …
In late March Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant previously known as Sberbank, took control of a Russian video creation startup called Movika. Sber announced its subsidiary Digital Assets acquired a 58% stake in Movika and could increase it to 80% in the future. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Movika’s technology allows …
A pool of individual investors has put 431 million rubles (around $5.6 million at the current exchange rate) in Beri Zaryad, a Moscow-based smartphone charging service. As reported by Forbes, the investors include Alexander Kabatov, Valery Ivanov, Bogdan Leonov and Alla Merman. The funding has been split as follows: 102 million rubles in capital injection …
Russian investors put millions in smartphone service startups Read More
A new Russian tech billionaire emerged last week on the NASDAQ with the SPAC-enabled listing of Arrival, a company touted as a game-changer in the electric car industry. Born 42 years ago in the Soviet republic of Georgia, Denis Sverlov founded in first company — an ERP integrator called IT Vision — in 2000, immediately after graduating the …
This former Russian deputy minister is now worth $10 billion after NASDAQ IPO Read More
The board of the Artificial Intelligence Alliance met in late March in Moscow, providing updates about this organization created by large Russian companies 2019. An investment platform will be launched to “consolidate the AI project and idea pipeline” and provide participating companies with access to the corporate accelerators of the members. Dubbed ‘AI-Hub,’ this platform will also “allow …
Russia’s AI Alliance launches training programs, contests and an investment platform Read More
The rumors aired in late 2020 about dissensions between Mail.ru Group (an LSE-listed Russian Internet major) and Sber (the state-controlled financial and technology giant previously known as Sberbank) could be confirmed soon. The Financial Times learned that the two groups are considering splitting jointly-owned assets, including meal delivery service Delivery Club and ride-hailing service Citimobil. These companies are part of a joint …
Sber and Mail.ru Group “on the brink of divorce” (FT) Read More
Dsight, a Moscow based business intelligence company with a focus on investment, has just released the English version of its yearly Russian venture report. The trends are disappointing, with a 20% contraction of total investment volume — from $869 million in 2019 to $702.8 million in 2020. Dsight attributes this fall to the “unpredictability of the …
2020 report: Russian VC market fell to $702 million, foreign investment reached new lows Read More
Earlier this week Playrix, a global Russian-founded gaming giant, announced the acquisition of Ukrainian game studio Boolat Games. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed. Launched 20 years ago, Boolat Games creates multi-platform free-to-play and adventure games. Different genres are available, from casual to hardcore: RPG, time-management, hidden objects, strategy, etc. The studio’s portfolio features dozens …
Russian gaming giant Playrix acquires Ukrainian Boolat Games Read More
On April 7-8, more than 200 Russian and foreign speakers as well as thousands of attendees are expected to take part in the 15th edition of the Russian Venture Forum (RVF). One of the country’s leading industry events, this forum is held each year in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan. This edition …
Startup Recipe, a leading South Korean startup media and a partner of East-West Digital News, has just released its 2020 Startup Investment Report. The report contains key facts, numbers and trends on this country’s startup investment and ecosystem, as well as information from the concerned startups and investment companies. The South Korean startup ecosystem was …
Report: South Korean startups revitalized with $3.6 billion injected in 2020 Read More
AliExpress Russia, a leading cross-border and domestic e-commerce platform in Russia, has invested in a major regional e-commerce company, KazanExpress, acquiring a 30% stake. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed but, in an exchange with Kommersant, KazanExpress co-owner Linar Khusnullin refered to an amount of “several billions of rubles” (dozens of millions of …
AliExpress Russia invests in regional marketplace KazanExpress Read More
