A draft law to create a “uniform federal database” in Russia – with the entire country’s personal data stored in one place – was adopted on May 21 by the lower house of parliament, the State Duma. Backers of the bill say it aims at ensuring reliability and consistency of data countrywide, but Anastasia Zlobina, …
Sberbank, the state-controlled finance and technology behemoth, Azbuka Vkusa, a leading grocery retail outlet network, and Visa have teamed up to launch “Russia’s first store fitted with computer vision solutions.” Located in the Moscow City business center, the ‘Take&Go’ store features an “intellectual surveillance system” which “constantly tracks the products on shelves.” When entering the store, customers …
Yandex.Taxi, the ride-hailing arm of Russian online giant Yandex, is pushing ahead with its plans to organise its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO), while struggling to remain profitable amidst the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Earlier this month, Yandex.Taxi CEO Tigran Khudaverdyan was quoted by The Bell as saying that the company has not abandoned plans to …
Russia’s Yandex.Taxi’s IPO still on, as it struggles to stay profitable Read More
Thursday last week Mail.ru Group and Sberbank announced that O2O, their ride-sharing and food delivery joint venture, completed the acquisition of Russian food delivery startup Samokat. Following approval from corporate bodies and antimonopoly authority FAS, O2O now owns 75.6% of the service. The remaining shares (24.4%) are in the hands of Samokat’s founders and managers. The transaction …
Mail.ru Group and Sberbank complete acquisition of food delivery service Samokat Read More
Hundreds of people have gathered to watch a live performance online on a Saturday night in Moscow. That’s become normal under the city’s strict coronavirus lockdown rules, but this is no Swan Lake. Four women have tied a man to a plastic-covered mattress in a sparsely decorated room. He wears nothing but a black face …
‘Kinky Russia’ throws Zoom orgies to overcome coronavirus quarantine Read More
Ecwid, a leading provider of social commerce solutions for small businesses, has just secured $42 million from Morgan Stanley and PeakSpan Capital. Using 54 languages to serve 1.5 million businesses across the world, Ecwid has made a long way since it was born in Ulyanovsk, 720 km east from Moscow, 10 years ago. Now headquartered …
Russian-born social commerce major raises $42 million in Silicon Valley Read More
Many tech entrepreneurs from Russia and neighboring countries tend to establish their startup abroad – in the USA, the EU, or Asia – as they reach a certain level of maturity, or even from the very start. The reasons for the startup drain include the limited size of the domestic market, the lack of locally-available …
Startup drain: Russian tech entrepreneurs smash it in Europe Read More
Yadro, a major vendor of hardware data storage systems controlled by Alisher Usmanov , has acquired a 51% stake in notAnotherOne. Founded in 2013, notAnotherOne is a full-cycle developer and manufacturer of innovative consumer and business electronics. The company focuses on industrial design, technology research, hardware design and cloud solution integration. notAnotherOne claims to have developed and manufactured six mobile apps, four cloud solutions and more than …
Russian oligarch Alisher Usmanov extends his tech empire to smart device manufacturer Read More
Mail.ru Group and Sberbank have invested in food delivery service Localkitchen.ru (“Kukhnya na rayone”) through their joint venture O2O. Citing Russia’s company register, business Vedomosti reported yesterday that O2O committed a loan of up to 290 million rubles (nearly $3.9 million at the current exchange rate) convertible into a 30% share. The news came just …
Mail.ru Group and Sberbank assert themselves on food delivery market Read More
On June 1-3 EMERGE, the leading international event on the Belarusian innovation scene, will hold its annual conference in an online format. Major global companies – including Chivas, Coursera, Dropbox, Farfetch, Ikea, MegaFon, Miro, Tesla, Transferwise and VTB – will participate. On the venture side, the event will gather such funds as Acrobator Ventures, Atomico, …
Top industry event turns virtual to showcase best “doers in tech” (June 1-3) Read More
Last week X5 Retail Group, a leading Russian food retailer listed on the Moscow and London stock exchanges, announced that its online sales – through Perekrestok.ru and Delivery.Pyaterochka – amounted to 1.7 billion rubles (incl. VAT, approximately $22.6 million) in April. This is a 4.7-time increase in value from the same month of last year. …
In April, X5 Retail’s online sales increased 4.7 times year-on-year Read More
“A US court stopped TON from happening:” with this simple explanation, VK and Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced today he is giving up his widely hyped blockchain and cryptocurrency project. This is the latest, but probably not the last episode of a saga which started in early 2018 with a controversial $1.7 billion ICO. Many unforeseen developments followed, …
Pavel Durov gives up his blockchain project, shifting the blame to US authorities Read More
