Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Tonight Germany is playing Greece. Before the game starts, here are news from startups in Russia and CEE.

Deal flow

Many funding news from Russia came in this week.

The biggest news was the $38 million funding round by the Russian Internet holding KupiVIP, whose new backers include Intel Capital.

TravelRent, the AirBnB of Russia founded by Fast Lane Ventures received $2 million funding from Frontier Ventures.

The CEO of one of the largest Russian Internet companies Mail.ru Dmitry Grischin has announced a  $25 million investment fund which he backed with his own money, focusing on robotics.

Leta Group put in $350,000 in Baltostorage, a photo storage startup, which claims to have acquired over 50,000 users within 3 months of launch.

A prominent Russian businessman Oleg Tinkov has announced his plans to build Internet businesses in advertisement space through his new company Tinkoff Digital. The company is backed by Tinkov and Goldman Sachs, and will invests up to $20 million in the new projects.

Sofline Venture Partners backed a social network app for career advancement Smart Start. This is a first investment of the fund in 2012.

Russian online retailer Mallstreet.ru, which has previously received funding from International investors such as Kima Ventures, has now raised $1 million. According to EWDN, the company generates $1.5 million in sales every month.

Russian search engine Yandex backed Russian geophysical exploration company Seismotech with $1 million in funding.

For those who can’t wait to join the funding frenzy and give money to the Russian internet entrepreneurs, here is a recent interview with Esther Dyson in Moscow Times.

And finally, one funding story outside of Russia, as Latvian startup Sellfy which helps authors sell their digital goods online, secured seed investment.

Launches

Hungarian startup PocketGuide now offers mobile guides for 78 international destinations.

The launch of the Estonian gaming accelerator GameFounders was covered by TechCrunch.

Competitions and awards

Russian app to spot and report bad parking jobs Parking Douche took the Gold award at Cannes Lions this week.

Czech startup Tripomatic won the latest API mashup contest.

Startup Yard, the Czech startup accelerator announced that it joined Global Accelerator Network.

And finally, an important news from Croatian startup ecosystem: Geeks on a Plane are coming to Zagreb.

News review

The success story of Lithuanian GetJar was reviewed here on GoalEurope.

The Polish founder of Polish Applicake and FutureSimple Ela Madej was interviewed by The Next Web.

Croatian startup Loccie which allows travelers to look for spontaneous new things, was reviewed by GigaOm in a story on hardware accelerator HAXLR8R.

GrabCAD’s new 3D functionality was reviewed by Steve O’Hear on TechCrunch.

Thumbs up for shedding more light on European news there Steve!

That’s all for this week. Enjoy the game.
Tweet

Follow @NatashaStarkell