In yet another step in its international expansion, Ru-Net, a major Russian venture fund, has invested $17 million in Freecultr.com and BeStylish.com, two Indian e-commerce companies. The news on the investment in Freecultr – a website that offers its own apparels brands – was initially reported earlier this month by Iamwire, an online publication dedicated …
Leta GIV, the corporate venture arm of Leta Group, announced an investment earlier this week in Baltostorage, an online service that allows users to store their pictures in a secured way. The fund invested $350,000 for an undisclosed stake in the company. BaltoStorage claims it already stores more than 1.7 million files from 50,000 registered …
Leta GIV invests in photo storage startup BaltoStorage Read More
LinguaLeo, a Russian startup with a web service that teaches English using popular TV serials, books and contextual dialogues, has just secured $3 million from Runa Capital, a major Moscow-based venture fund. The site now serves 1.5 million registered users, of which 40,000 are paid subscribers, LinguaLeo founder Aynur Abdulnasyrov told East-West Digital News.
Morgan Stanley has been mandated by Superjob.ru, a leading online recruitment platform with 3.2 million unique users monthly, to find a potential acquirer of a minority stake, Russian business daily Kommersant reported yesterday. “We would offer a minority stake to a partner whose good name on the NASDAQ could help us go public successfully,” Kommersant …
Superjob seeks minority shareholder “for successful IPO” Read More
With net sales reaching €470 million in 2011 – including 50% generated online – the Otto Group has asserted itself as a leading player on the Russian e-commerce scene. In this exchange with East-West Digital News, CEO Martin Schierer shares his vision of this fast-growing market, speaking openly about the challenges of building a multichannel …
Global self-service wholesaler Metro Cash & Carry will open an online store in Russia in the last quarter of this year, according to the Russian subsidiary’s general manager, Peter Boon. Tests of the online platform will start in August, Boon told the Russian news agency RIA Novosti. The company will continue to develop its offline …
Metro Cash & Carry to launch online store in Q4 2012 Read More
AFK Sistema, a Russian LSE-listed holding, announced last week that it has invested in Stream.ru, a paid video content portal formerly known as Omlet.ru. Stream.ru was launched in 2009 by MTS, a Sistema subsidiary and a leading Russian mobile operator. With a reported investment of 496 million rubles ($15 million), Sistema now owns 55% of …
AFK Sistema lays out $15 million to buttress Omlet.ru as content startup rebrands Read More
Scartel, the leading Russian WiMAX and LTE operator operating under the Yota brand, stopped operations in Bielorussia yesterday, just six months after it launch in this country of almost 10 million inhabitants. Scartel had deployed 38 LTE base stations deployed in Minsk, the capital, and Grodno, a major city.
MirVracha.ru, a major Internet portal for physicians and medical students, has completed its first round of financing, totaling $1.4 million. The round was led by Japanese fund UMJ Russia, which received a majority stake, with the participation of M3 Inc., a Japanese company offering innovative web solutions for medical professionals and the life sciences industry, …
Physicians’ portal MirVracha secures $1.4 million from Japanese investors Read More
Yesterday, Paris-based Olma Invest SAS announced it has invested €1 million in Dimeres, a group of e-commerce and e-marketing companies operating in the field of fashion, in exchange for a 25% stake. Founded in 2011 by French entrepreneurs Maximilien Jacquet and Frédéric Bonelli, Dimeres has adapted successful shopping models from Western markets. Among the Dimeres …
A major player on the Russian e-commerce scene suddenly emerged in late May: a cash-back e-commerce platform called Clickandpay.ru that claims to have raised $60 million to finance just the first stages of its development. After a few months operating in test mode, the site has already enrolled more than 50 e-shops, including such market …
First Russian cash-back marketplace launches; claims to have raised $60 million Read More
A consortium of investors led by Da Vinci Capital Partners, Insight Capital, Alpha Associates and Runa Capital has invested $45 million for a minority stake in B2B-Center.ru, the leading online procurement platform in Russia. This cash-out deal valued the company at an approximate $160 million, company founder Alexander Boyko told Russian business daily Vedomosti last …
Russian and Western funds acquire minority stakes in online procurement service B2B-Center Read More
