This is THE month of the startup conferences. Only in Europe Web Summit Dublin takes place at the same time as IDCEE, a week after Webit Congress coming to an end. Everyone on my social news feed seems to be travelling, but I have decided to stay at my desk. I will however attend Pioneers Festival later this month. Meanwhile, here is the news summary from Russian and Eastern European startups.
Deal flow
Estonian GrabCad raises $8.15 million from Charles River Ventures and others. The company plans to invest the money in building collaborative tools for its community of mechanical engineers. The website already offers an online community and a marketplace for CAD engineers.
Russian startup information source Startup Afisha raised $3 million from Black Ocean Capital to create a RusBase, a startup and venture investor directory for Russian high tech, in a style of CrunchBase. The English version of RusBase will go live in November 2012.
Runa Capital invested $2 million in the location-based voice messaging startup Talkbits.
Hungarian Startup TresorIt, which helps transfer files securely in insecure networks, raised nearly 1,4 million Euro from Euroventures, a Hungarian VC, backed by Jeremie fund.
Estonian Pult.io, a smart phone based remote control and content streaming solution for a TV picked up 100,000 Euro prize from Qualcom Ventures, according to Arctic Startup.
Moscow Seed Fund backed TeachBase, an online distant learning company. The size of the deal was not disclosed. It was the first deal by the Moscow Seed Fund, Moscow City government’s venture investment arm.
Angel investor Startobaza backed social media recruitment app SmartStart. The details of the deal were not disclosed, according to Unova.
Polish social media monitoring startup SentiOne, got backing from the angel investor Daniel Lewczuk, the co-founder of the Polish professional network Goldenline.pl.
Also in Poland Allegro Group bought Polish clone of Digg called Wykop.pl.
Launches
Latvian startup Infogr.am launches its cloud-based infografics design tool.
New venture fund Chernovetskyi Investment Group launches in Ukraine. The size of the fund may be as high as $750 million, and it will invest between $100K to $20 million into startups, according to Leonid Chernovetskyi’s interview to Investgazeta.
Russian startup factory Fast Lane Ventures launched an online credit card IQCard, according to Unova.
PayLane.com, an online payments processing provider from Poland launched wire transfers service.
Press coverage
Czech startup scene was covered by Pavel Curda on the Next Web.
EWDN wrote about Microsoft pick of Russian IT startups, where the company invested $160K via its vehicle Microsoft Russia Seed Fund. It includes MoosCool, an artist promotion platform, Car-Fin, online car purchase broker and creditor, and SportFort interactive website creation service for football teams.
Jennifer Schlenker at Informilo included Slovenian Vox.io, Belarusian/Ukrainian Profitero, Croatian Farmeron and Estonian Transferwise on the list of Europe’s hottest early stage companies.
Polish digital product selling platform Sellbox came third at Webit Congress Startup Challenge competition.
That’s it for this week, unless IDCEE will make a timely announcement of the startup competition winner.
Image by Lioba Schneider.
