In October news kept coming in from Russian startups. The investment deals we tracked were worth over $30M, and Mail.Ru Group’s the buying spree resulted in two M&A deals worth $130M.
iCanDeliver from Russia receives $5M
A&NN Group and Amereus Group invested $5M into iCanDeliver, an online service which “uberizes” freight transportation for b2b in Russia. The company will use the money to expand internationally and enter the market of railroad freight transportation and cargo shipping. This spring iCanDeliver was valued at $10M.
iCanDeliver was founded by Danil Rudakov in 2015. The service allows freighters to find transporters and vehicles. It localizes the closest truck driver and gives the order to him. The company charges an undisclosed commission for each delivery.
Metacommerce raised $1 million from state fund FRII
E-commerce analytics platform Metacommerce, which is based in Moscow, received around $950K from Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF, or FRII in Russian), which was the sole investor in this round.
The startup collects and analyzes data about prices, product availability, marketing actions, etc. from thousands of websites, and allows its clients to monitor the information from the market and their competitors. The monitoring enables e-commerce sites to automate repricing and assortment changes.
Russian calorie tracker HealBe gets $6.5M from Starta Capital
Crowdsourced delivery service Dostavista raises $800K and develops internationally
Crowdsourced courier service Dostavista from Russia raised $800,000 from several unnamed Russian individual investors. Dostavista had already received about $350K in two rounds two years ago.
The service promises to deliver documents and parcels in just 90 minutes. According to Dostavista, the company completed more than one million deliveries over the last year.
The company has been operating in Moscow since 2012, and now covers six more Russian cities. This summer Dostavista came to the Indian market of Mumbai, Delhi and Bengalore.
Mail.Ru Group buys gamedev company Pixonic
Russian Internet company Mail.Ru Group bought a Moscow-based mobile game developer Pixonic for $30M. Pixonic was founded in 2009. It was initially backed by Russian venture fund AddVenture and developed and published social network games. In 2013, the company started to develop more long-term mobile projects. The first successful games were was Robinson and War Robots. In 2015, Pixonic earned about $7.3M and in H1 2016 the company’s revenue reached $8.8M, making Pixonic one of the most successful Russian game publishers.
Mail.ru Group has also developed a number of successful games (Skyforge, Legend: Legacy of the Dragons, Lovely Farm, Jungle Heat, Warface, etc.) and after the acquisition of Pixonic the company will increase the audience of gamers.
Earlier we reported Mail.Ru’s acquisition of Delivery Club, Russian food delivery startup from foodpanda’s family.
Two exits in CEE: Printivate, Romania, and Foodpanda, Russia
Hoversurf raises $210K
Russian drone company Hoversurf raised $210K from Starta Capital and some business angels whose names are not disclosed.
Hoversurf designs and produces heavy lift drones for agriculture, monitoring, cargo transportation, ice reconnaissance, geological exploration, delivery of oil and gas equipment to remote places, and others. The company is working on drones with carrying capacity from 90 to 2,500 kg. This summer Hoversurf created a flying bike Scorpion 1 which is able to speed up to 100 km per hour. Scorpion 1 can be pre-ordered for $52K.
Verso algorithm can track human activities in all media
Russian Ventures together with MediaMetrics have developed an AI computer vision software Verso. The service is aimed to discover patterns of how the messages spread. It monitors any type of media to find people of interest.
Verso’s AI-powered algorithm, designed at Moscow State University, can recognize even a blurred image of a person with a 99% match. The service was used to rapidly detect faces of Presidents and Prime Ministers, analyze their appearances on TV and show their rating in real-time.
Verso is going to make a searchable archive of at least 100 TV channels. The company also plans to enlarge the list of functions with text tracking and voice recognition.
Russian Mobile Doctor gets $100K from Vengo Group
Vengo Group, which specializes in mobile technology, invested $100K into Mobile Doctor. The project will also get premium traffic for 1,000,000 commercial previews in the Media from iVengo Mobile.
Mobile Doctor is a cross-platform solution that provides a video consultation service from the best general pediatricians and practitioners of Moscow through iOS and Android apps.
The money will be spent on MVP launch and R&D. The startup is planning to cooperate with large insurance companies to develop the segment of mobile insurance certificates, and a SaaS-platform for doctors and clinics.
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