This article was published on March 31, 2015

All the tech news you shouldn’t miss from Eastern Europe in March


All the tech news you shouldn’t miss from Eastern Europe in March

The technology business industry in Eastern Europe has started this spring with a healthy number of deals and announcements, which could be hard to catch as they’re scattered between dozens of local news outlets.

To help you stay up to date, we’ve compiled the most significant headlines into one handy roundup post. If you think that something is missing, or would like to draw our attention to an important story, feel free to ping the author on Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at [email protected].

Startups, funds, accelerators

  • Vilnius-based startup accelerator StartupHighway has opened applications to startups for up to €25,000 in seed funding and participation in their newly designed acceleration program
  • Ukraine-born CheckiO has partnered with Treehouse to offer entry-level programming courses
  • Baltic investors Openroad Capital have expressed an intention to invest up to $500 million in Ukrainian startups
  • ArcticStartup has announced launch of its CoFounder print magazine with a campaign on Indiegogo
  • Russian venture fund Life.SREDA has moved to Singapore
  • Teams from Hungary, Estonia and Austria have won the CEE Women Startup Competition in Budapest
  • French startup accelerator Numa has opened a new office in Moscow
  • Ukrainian-Dutch GitHub challenger GitLab has made it into Y Combinator
  • Estonian taxi booking startup Taxify has rolled out a Windows Phone app

Funding deals and M&A

  • Ukraine-born startup Petcube has raised $1.1 in funding from AVentures Capital, Almaz Capital and other investors
  • Russian billionaire Yuri Milner’s investment firm DST Global has held talks with Indian taxi-hailing startup Ola to lead a $400-500 million financing round at a valuation of $2.5 billion
  • Blablacar has acqui-hired Budapest based Autohop to expand in the region
  • Moscow-based venture funds Leta Capital and Simile Venture Partners have invested $3.2 milllion in fintech big data startup Double Data
  • Farfetch, the London-based online marketplace for high end fashion retailers, has announced an $86 million funding round led by Yuri Milner’s DST Global
  • Goldman Sachs has invested $8 million in Russian flight ticket booking site OneTwoTrip
  • Russian cellular tracking startup iTraq has raised more than $237,000 in a successful Indiegogo campaign
  • Russian fund Altair Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in Israeli social media monitoring startup Twtrland
  • Western investors have injected more than $5 million in Russian online travel agency Oktogo
  • Russian wedding organization startup Wedvice has received $400,000 in funding
  • Net Element has acquired Russian online payment service provider PayOnline
  • Ukrainian smart emailing startup Newzmate has attracted $300,000 in funding from Polish VC firm Xevin Investments and Dutch angel investor Bas Godska
  • Riga-based database platform Clusterpoint has secured a €1,25 million funding round
  • Russian fund ru-Net has invested $26 million in Freecharge and DataDog
  • Russian fund SBT Capital has invested an undisclosed amount in anti-fraud company IdentityMind
  • Ukrainian game development studio Nravo has attracted more than $200,000 in funding from Digital Future
  • Russian fund TMT Investments has participated in a $1.3 million funding round of Israeli E2C
  • Russian-Israeli marketing platform Solomoto has attracted $10.8 million in funding from a group of investors in exchange for a 25% stake
  • Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has led an investment in Israel’s iAngels platform
  • Russian fund Runa Capital has participated in a $20.5 million funding round of US-based startup Lendio
  • Polish m-commerce analytics startup KoalaMetrics has attracted €80,000 in funding from Deutsche Telekom
  • Ukrainian AR startup Augmented Pixels has announced a $1 million funding round and plans to relocate to California
  • Romanian gaming startup Green Horse Games has received a series A funding round from Catalyst Romania

In other news

  • Russia’s Mail.Ru Group saw its revenue increase to $58 million in 2014, which represents growth of 14.8% compared to the previous year
  • Yandex Data Factory has started providing user churn predictions for Wargaming’s World of Tanks MMOG
  • Yota has confirmed that the second generation of its double-screen YotaPhone will hit the US via Indiegogo priced at $600
  • Maelle Gavet has stepped down as CEO of Russian online retail giant OZON
  • Russia’s Ulmart has been shopping around with Hong Kong on IPO schedule
  • Mail.ru Group has launched a unified mobile advertising platform myTarget, which combines the audience of mobile services and social networks in Russia and the CIS
  • Russia’s venture investment market has seen a 26% decrease over the last year
  • Yandex.Turkey and Mozilla Corporation have announced that Yandex will be the default search engine for Turkish language versions of Firefox on mobile and desktop
  • Online game World of Tanks developed by Belarusian Wargaming has earned more than $500 million in 2014
  • Russia has set to create a council for cyber security
  • Google and Apple may be forced to pay more tax in Russia
  • Russian search giant Yandex will open an office in Shanghai

Good (long) reads from around the Web

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