As instant messengers (IM) are getting increased traction — even more than the classic Internet and social networks for certain user categories — Intento offers a new way to explore their content, which is generally ignored by traditional search engines. The startup claims to have developed “the only automatic crawl-and-search engine indexing the content of …
Intento aims to build “the Google for IM and chat bot content” Read More
Today Mail.ru Group, a leading, LSE-listed Russian Internet company, announced the acquisition Delivery Club, the number one food delivery company in Russia owned by Rocket Internet’s Foodpanda. The Russian group is acquiring 100% of Delivery Club for $100 million in an all cash transaction, with 90% of the amount to be paid in November and the remaining part …
Mail.ru Group acquires Rocket Internet’s Russian food delivery business for $100 million Read More
Exemplifying the globalization of Russian venture capital, Ru-Net has made a variety of investments in the USA, Europe and Asia, mostly in the field of e-commerce. While continuing to support its portfolio companies, the fund does not intend to enter new markets, said its founder Leonid Boguslavsky, a figure of the Russian venture scene, in a recent interview with the …
USM Holdings, a company controlled by Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, is about to invest 500 million rubles (approximately $8 million at the current exchange rate) in tax data operator OFD.RU. The news was reported earlier this month by business daily Kommersant, based on exchanges with representatives of both companies. The funding will be spent on …
Alisher Usmanov invests $8 million in tax data operator OFD.RU Read More
Busfor, an online bus ticketing and distribution platform based in Moscow, Russia, and Kyiv (Kiev), Ukraine, has just raised $20 million from private equity funds Baring Vostok Capital Partners and Elbrus Capital. Since its inception in Ukraine in 2010, the company — previously known as Gillbus — had received financial support from Intel Capital, InVenture Partners and FinSight in 2014, …
Busfor secures $20 million “to reinvent bus travel” across Europe and beyond Read More
The London-based European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has finally decided not to resume operations in Russia next year. The matter had been discussed internally during the summer, as the profitability of the EBRD’s Russian projects was found to be higher than the average, while the state of mind of some of the bank’s shareholders …
EBRD will not resume funding for Russian projects in 2017 Read More
Russian crowdsourced courier service Dostavista has raised $800,000 and entered the Indian market, Russian tech blog Firrma.ru reported last week, citing exchanges with the company. The deal, which took place in the spring of this year, involved several unnamed Russian individual investors who had already put money in the company. Before this round, Dostavista had raised 22 million …
Crowdsourced delivery service Dostavista raises $800,000 and develops internationally Read More
Ziyavudin Magomedov, a top businessman from Dagestan, took part in Hyperloop One’s latest $50 million round of funding and became a member of the US startup’s board of directors, Russian business daily RBC reported last week. The Russian billionaire had already participated in two previous rounds of the company. The latest one, which amounted to $80 million, …
Ziyavudin Magomedov becomes member of Hyperloop One’s board of directors Read More
The Russian textbook publishing house Prosveshchenie (‘Enlightenment’ in English) has agreed with the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) to jointly launch an accelerator for edtech startups. The publishing house — of which Russian billionnaire Arkady Rotenberg is chairman and a shareholder — intends to invest up to 3 billion rubles (approximately $48 million …
Last month the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) invested 60 million rubles ($950,000 at the current exchange rate) in Metacommerce, a Moscow-based startup which has developed an e-commerce analytics platform. FRII was the sole investor in this round, but the startup had previously secured mentoring and financial support from Igor Ashmanov, a prominent …
E-commerce analytics platform Metacommerce secures nearly $1 million from IIDF Read More
UK-based education service MEL Science announced today the completion of its Series A funding round with Sistema VC injecting $2.5 million in the company. MEL Science claims that its subscription service, which features nearly 40 interactive chemistry sets, is “changing science education” by “incorporating for the first time the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) into a single …
UK edtech startup receives Russian money to “bring VR and AR to chemistry education” Read More
Sistema VC has just injected 65 million rubles (slightly more than $1 million at the current exchange rate) in Luden.io, a Moscow-based developer of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) games. The fund has received a 25% stake in the company, Luden General Manager Alexey Katkov told business daily Vedomosti. Sistema VC is one of the corporate …
Sistema VC invests $1 million in VR and AR game developer Read More
