The Skolkovo Foundation will set up three venture capital funds to provide additional sources of funding for startups, said its president Victor Vekselberg in late October at the Open Innovations forum. Funded by the Russian government, the Skolkovo Foundation manages the completion of an international tech hub on the outskirts of Moscow. “Now we’re creating a daughter …
The Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian) has teamed up with the Bauman Moscow State Technical University to create an Internet-of-Things (IoT) association in Russia. The association will be headed by Andrey Kolesnikov, who previoulsy managed the National Domain Name Coordination Center. The association intends to define a “roadmap” for the development of IoT in …
IIDF teams up with major technical university create IoT association in Russia Read More
As instant messengers (IM) are getting increased traction — even more than the classic Internet and social networks for certain user categories — Intento offers a new way to explore their content, which is generally ignored by traditional search engines. The startup claims to have developed “the only automatic crawl-and-search engine indexing the content of …
Intento aims to build “the Google for IM and chat bot content” Read More
Exemplifying the globalization of Russian venture capital, Ru-Net has made a variety of investments in the USA, Europe and Asia, mostly in the field of e-commerce. While continuing to support its portfolio companies, the fund does not intend to enter new markets, said its founder Leonid Boguslavsky, a figure of the Russian venture scene, in a recent interview with the …
TechRepublic, an international publication aiming to identify technologies and strategies for IT companies, has highlighted five top Russian startups. “Although Russia’s economy has been tumultuous and the tech landscape is largely associated by Westerners as hacker-centric, a strong technological and entrepreneurial culture has developed in the country over the past half decade and produced a number of …
Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom and Internet regulator, has initiated a legal procedure to block access to LinkedIn from Russia, should the US site not comply with the new legislation on personal data storage. This legislation, which came into force in September 2015, requires to store Russian citizens’ personal data only in databases located on Russia territory (see white paper by EWDN and EY). Many …
Russia urges LinkedIn to comply with personal data legislation Read More
During three days in mid-October Colombia 4.0, an international event dedicated to digital content industries, took place in Bogota, attracting more than ten thousand participants. The latest trends in animation, video games, web, mobile development, digital advertising, monetization, digital media, music and entrepreneurship were highlighted through lectures, panels and workshops involving more than 190 national and international …
Russian crowdsourced courier service Dostavista has raised $800,000 and entered the Indian market, Russian tech blog Firrma.ru reported last week, citing exchanges with the company. The deal, which took place in the spring of this year, involved several unnamed Russian individual investors who had already put money in the company. Before this round, Dostavista had raised 22 million …
Crowdsourced delivery service Dostavista raises $800,000 and develops internationally Read More
Ziyavudin Magomedov, a top businessman from Dagestan, took part in Hyperloop One’s latest $50 million round of funding and became a member of the US startup’s board of directors, Russian business daily RBC reported last week. The Russian billionaire had already participated in two previous rounds of the company. The latest one, which amounted to $80 million, …
Ziyavudin Magomedov becomes member of Hyperloop One’s board of directors Read More
The Russian online economy reached 1.94 trillion rubles (roughly $31 billion at the average exchange rate) in 2015, according to “The Runet Economy,” a study released last month by the Russian Association for Electronic Communications (RAEC). This amount is equal to 2.4% of Russia’s gross domestic product, slightly more (0.2 percentage points) than in 2014. Due …
Report: Russia’s online economy accounts for nearly 2.5% of GDP Read More
UK-based education service MEL Science announced today the completion of its Series A funding round with Sistema VC injecting $2.5 million in the company. MEL Science claims that its subscription service, which features nearly 40 interactive chemistry sets, is “changing science education” by “incorporating for the first time the virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) into a single …
UK edtech startup receives Russian money to “bring VR and AR to chemistry education” Read More
Less than two months after launch, video editing mobile app Artisto has broken into the top 5 of the App Store and Google Play in the USA for the Photo & Video category. Launched in early August by Russian Internet company Mail.ru Group and its US subsidiary My.com, the app — the first of its kind — allows users to edit …
