Last month AbeBooks, an online book retailer founded in 1995 (acquired by Amazon in 2008), announced its intention to close bookseller accounts in Czechia, Hungary, South Korea and Russia, starting from Nov. 30. Activities in these countries are “no longer viable to operate due to increasing costs and complexities,” AbeBooks stated. AbeBooks’ service will continue in …
RealtimeBoard, a startup with Russian roots which offers a visual collaboration tool for distributed teams, has raised $25 million in California. This Series A funding round was led by Accel, with participation from existing investor AltaIR Capital, a seed stage fund with Russian and Israeli roots. Another investor in RealtimeBoard is Dutch businessman Bas Godska, …
Russian-founded software publisher RealtimeBoard raises $25 million in California Read More
GSMA Intelligence, the research branch of international mobile operator association GSMA, has just released an overview of the mobile economy in Russia and 11 neighboring countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. The findings of the report may be summarized as follows: Mobile penetration rates The region was …
4G growing fast, 5G to follow in Russia and neighboring countries, says GSMA report Read More
A San Francisco-based startup, Propy, founded by Russian immigrant Natalia Karanyaeva, has powered Europe’s first real estate deal on blockchain. Previously, the project secured the first property transaction of $10 as a part of a pilot program in the state of Vermont in the USA. The EU’s first property sale on blockchain took place in …
A startup with Russian roots signs EU’s first blockchain property deal Read More
Thousands of wealthy Moscow residents who subscribed to a regional Internet provider have had personal data including names, home addresses and mobile numbers posted online. People affected by the data leak are all clients of Moscow-based internet provider Akado Telecom, a large telecommunications network owned by billionaire businessman Viktor Vekselberg, which said it had opened an …
Data leak affects thousands of wealthy Moscow residents Read More
Starting from next summer, electric scooters and kick-scooters will be available for short-term rental in the Finnish capital. Fifty docking stations will be created by Helsinki’s regional transport authority (HSL) with the rental system provided by Russian startup Samocat Sharing. The initiative comes as a result of IdeaLab, a Helsinki tech contest which was launched …
Russian startup wins competition to launch scooter docks in Helsinki Read More
Several news came last month from Yandex.Taxi, the taxi-hailing company which merged activities in Russia and some neighboring countries with Uber earlier this year. The company bought the software assets of a Moscow-based company, Nowtaxi. The software supports the accounting of operations with affiliated drivers and provides related analytics. Formally, the software assets, not the company, have …
Yandex.Taxi asserts market leadership, announces new acquisitions Read More
Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, announced its quarterly earnings yesterday, demonstrating an impressive growth. Thus, in Q3 2018, the company’s revenues jumped to 32.6 billion rubles ($496.6 million), up 39% compared with Q3 2017, while its net income reached 4.8 billion ($72.7 million) a whopping 459% increase year-on-year (net income margin: 14.6%; adjusted net income 6.1 …
With 27 offices worldwide, Yandex demonstrated strong growth in Q3 2018 Read More
Avast, a global leader in digital security solutions, has announced an increase in attempts to infect Russians’ browsers with so-called cryptojacking malware in September. In just a month, about 5.1 million such attacks were recorded in Russia, as confirmed by an Avast study. The study has revealed an interesting trend: the frequency of cryptojacking attacks …
Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov, whose holding company USM so far controlled Mail.Ru Group via MF Technologies, “is no longer the ultimate controlling party” of the group, according to a statement published earlier this week. USM and MegaFon, two key shareholders of MF Technologies, have authorized the group’s management led by CEO Boris Dobrodeev to exercise voting rights …
Usmanov drops Mail.Ru control to protect the group from potential US sanctions Read More
Earlier this month, as the Open Innovations forum gathered thousands of Russian and foreign participants on the outskirts of Moscow, the Skolkovo Foundation signed agreements with Chinese players. As reported by Skolkovo news portal Sk.ru, the Russian tech hub agreed with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei to set up a joint innovations center. The R&D effort …
Skolkovo develops R&D and venture projects with Chinese players Read More
Foodza, a startup that organizes direct supplies of fresh fruit and vegetable to retail stores, restaurants and cafés, recently secured $1 million in a round of funding led by Mail.Ru Group. Among the other participants in the deal are Larix VC, a fund launched by Moscow-based businessmen Oskar Hartmann and Igor Rybakov; FJ Labs, the investment …
