Earlier this week the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian), a government-supported initiative, announced that it started receiving its first applications from individual entrepreneurs from all over Russia. The fund has received no less than 6 billion rubles (approximately $200 million) from state corporations. This huge amount is to be invested in …
Last week the startup Westudy.in, intended for Russian high schoolers who wish to study abroad, announced its official launch. Recently the project received $300,000 in seed funding from Mikhail Frolkin, the managing partner of HeadHunter, a leading online resource for Russian job seekers. Westudy.in presents itself as a one-stop shop for people looking for information …
How difficult is Russia as an investment destination for an international investor? Acclimation, at least, is not a problem, according to Intel Capital’s President Arvind Sodhani who celebrated the fund’s ten years of activity in Russia earlier this month. “I imagine Moscow as a city covered by 10 feet of snow, but every time I …
In a new illustration of the internationalization of Russia’s venture capital, SBT Venture Capital, the venture arm of the national savings bank Sberbank, has led a $12 million round to fund Sequent Software, a California-based provider of trusted service manager (TSM) and mobile commerce software and services. Sequent’s existing US investors Opus Capital and Jado …
California’s Sequent raises $12 million from Russian and US funds for mobile wallet tech Read More
Last week Leta Capital, the venture arm of Russian IT security solution provider Leta Group, and TMT Investments, a UK-headquartered venture fund backed by Russian businessmen, announced a $1 million investment in Californian startup rollApp. RollApp provides a software-on-demand service designed to instantly deliver existing third-party software applications to any web-browser-equipped device with broadband/3G.
The Moscow Seed Fund, the City of Moscow’s venture arm, has poured 8 million rubles (about $240,000) into a startup named Probki Iz Okna (Russian for “traffic jams from the window”). The company has created a large network of webcams installed and controlled by users to monitor the road traffic situation in real time in the …
Moscow Seed Fund invests $240,000 in traffic monitoring service Read More
MTT, a Russian telecom group owned by VTB and former telecommunication minister Leonid Reiman, has announced that it has invested 50 million rubles (about $1.5 million) in Frolik, a service for children and their parents, since project start in September 2012. “As for future investments, we will continue funding the project, but we are open …
Family cloud platform Frolik nears completion after $1.5 million investment Read More
BubbleGab, a Russian startup developing a SaaS platform for building websites, has attracted $1 million in funding from RVC’s Seed Fund and Softline Venture Partners, the venture arm of the Softline Group. Founded in 2011, BubbleGab is working on a platform to allow users to create personal websites and social networks based on the information …
RVC and Softline invest $1 million in social site builder BubbleGab Read More
Phenomen Ventures, a $300 million international venture fund launched last year by Russian businessman Dmitry Falkovich, has led a $30 million Series D financing round for Delivery Hero, a Berlin-based food delivery startup operating globally. Delivery Hero’s existing investors, which include Russia’s Kite Ventures, also participated in the round. “Delivery Hero is catching up quickly …
Dmitry Falkovich’s Phenomen Ventures leads Delivery Hero’s $30 million round of financing Read More
Moscow-based startup Travelata.ru has just raised $5 million in a Series A round from Polish private equity fund MCI Management. The capital injection went through Invia.cz, one of MCI’s portfolio companies, which sells package tours online in the Czech Republic and four other Eastern and Central European countries. The funding will be used to further …
Package tour reseller Travelata.ru secures $5 million investment from Poland’s MCI Read More
Willemstad – Startup Stock Exchange (SSX), a global, regulated marketplace for startup investing and funding, was launched on June 10th and is now open for Russian investors and Russian startups. On SSX, investors of any level buy ownership shares of vetted startup companies. Shares trade freely on the exchange, providing a liquid market. Investors can buy …
Global marketplace for startup investing and funding open to Russian players Read More
“I want to assure you on behalf of the Kremlin and the government of the Russian Federation that Skolkovo is here to stay, it is our strategic course, and there can be no changes there,” the Russian news agency ITAR TASS quoted Sergey Ivanov, the Russian president’s chief of staff, as saying last week. “Individual scandalous …
