Yandex, the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant, announced yesterday its financial results for the fourth quarter and the full year that ended December 31, 2013: the company’s revenue jumped to 39.5 billion rubles ($1.2069 billion), up 37% from the previous year. On a like-for-like basis, the year-on-year growth actually attained 39% when tallied without Yandex.Money, the …
Mail.Ru Group Limited (LSE: MAIL, hereinafter referred as “the Company” or “the Group”), one of the largest Internet companies in the high-growth Russian-speaking Internet market, today provides the following preliminary unaudited segment financial information and key operating highlights for the full year ended 31 December 2013.
Earlier this month two major Russian multi-channel retailers, Enter and Ulmart, announced almost simultaneously their plans to let third-party merchants sell or promote offers via their sites. “Amazon’s Marketplace generates almost 40% of their sales, and I think we’re going the same way,” said Maxim Nogotkov, the Russian billionaire who backs Enter.ru, speaking to the …
Enter and Ulmart open their websites to third-party retailers Read More
Gazprombank, an affiliate of the state-controlled gas giant, now has a controlling stake in WebMediaGroup, after acquiring the stake previously held by Rostelecom’s president Sergey Kalugin. WebMediaGroup’s other shareholders are Leader Innovations and individual investors. Gazprombank and Leader Innovations had acquired minority stakes in the company in 2011.
YaKlass has secured $450,000 in a second round of financing in less than one year, the startup’s founder Valery Nikitin told Firrma.ru, an online publication covering the Russian startup and venture scene. Two major venture funds, Almaz Capital and Vesna Investment, along with Russian businessman Pavel Kovsharov, brought in the funds, which will be spent on …
E-learning startup YaKlass secures second round from Almaz Capital and Vesna Investment Read More
German startup Kreditech, a German startup aiming to become “the Amazon for consumer-finance”, has entered the Russian market. It offers micro loans to consumers and also provides a credit rating service for enterprise customers. The startup’s founders Sebastian Diemer, Alexander Graubner-Müller and Felix Haas believe that their algorithm, which processes over 8,000 data points in …
German consumer-finance startup Kreditech arrives in Russia Read More
Last week Da Vinci Private Equity Fund II, a Russian investment fund focused on financial infrastructure in Russia and the former Soviet Union, announced it had acquired a 63% stake in ITinvest, a major Russian online broker established in 2000. The amount of the transaction has not been disclosed, but Vladimir Kochetkov, the president of Finam, a sizable …
Da Vinci acquires majority stake in online broker ITinvest Read More
iTech Capital, a Russian PE & VC firm, announced today an investment of $10 million in Aviasales.ru, a leading search engine for flights and hotel bookings. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed, but the firm told East-West Digital News it had obtained a stake of less than 30%. The company – which …
Travel metasearch engine Aviasales secures $10 million from iTech Capital Read More
More than 1,800 instances of the government-led abuse of Russian Internet users’ rights for unrestricted access to web-based information last year were brought to light in a muckraking report issued last week by a Russian civil rights group. Agora, an interregional association of Russian civil rights NGOs set up in 2005 to bring together lawyers …
Civil activists expose violations of Internet freedom across Russia Read More
Earlier this week Yandex announced the opening of an R&D office in Berlin – the 16th office globally and the third office in Western Europe of the NASDAQ-listed Russian search giant. The airy office space in Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse has enough room for up to 130 people, Yandex stated. It will be progressively filled with 30-40 work …
On February 4, 2014 Facebook, the most popular social network in the world turns 10 years old. With 1.23 billion users around the world, the company is worth $150 billion, a global record for an internet company. Despite dominating markets all over the world, however, Facebook is visibly less popular in Russia than local social media. So …
Can Facebook win a bigger share of the Russian social media pie? Read More
Last week Rambler, a sizable Russian-language portal and a part of the Afisha-Rambler group, launched its new Internet browser that is said to be able to create customized news compilations for each specific user. The browser has evolved from the codes that once enabled Google’s open source Chromium projects, but also incorporates design elements and …
Rambler’s new user-friendly browser offers personalized news filtering Read More
