UK-based, Russian-backed TMT Investments has made an investment of USD350,000 in Graphicly, a self-service digital distribution resource site for indie publishers and publishing companies. Former investors in the company include TechStars, Mercury Fund, Dundee Venture Capital and others. The investment has been made despite a loss exceeding USD1.6 mln in 2012. Graphicly (www.graphicly.com) Graphicly is [...]

Qiwi, Russia’s leading payment service provider is considering IPO on NASDAQ in mid 2013 that may value the company at USD 1bln. The company named JP Morgan and Credit Suisse as joint bookrunners, filed to raise USD 100 million last week, and plans to offer up to 30% of its share. Pricing terms remained undisclosed for [...]

Baxter Ventures, set up by global healthcare provider Baxter International, is investing EUR 2 mln in a EUR 4 mln round of financing (series A) in Zytoprotec. The Viennese biotechnology company is developing an innovative cytoprotective compound for peritoneal dialysis (PD).  Zytoprotec has previously attracted investments of up to EUR 6.7 mln from various institutional and [...]

Scitech Holding, a leading player in the international market for sports nutrition, has taken on board Enterprise Investors and Morgan Stanley Alternative Investment Partners as significant minority stakeholders in a recent transaction. The acquisition of equity will enable the target company to continue its successful growth path of the past two decades. The Morgan Stanley [...]

In an exceedingly oversubscribed round of funding participated in by TA Venture, TEC Ventures and no less than four angel investor groups, TranscribeMe has garnered USD 1.5 mln worth of financing against an original objective of USD 900,000. The company has developed a unique, crowd-source-based audio transcription service aimed at professionals and corporate users, among [...]

Highlander Partners, a Dallas, Texas-based investment company, has concluded its fourth investment deal in Poland through the purchase of ProService AT, a financial services company specializing in transfer agent services to large-scale funds – such as pension and investment) and individual distributors of financial products in Poland. Highlander has purchased the company from Skarbiec Asset Management, which [...]

Russian VC fun Almaz Capital has made a lucrative all-cash exit from portfolio company Vyatta, selling its stake to American software developer Brocade for as estimated returns rate of nearly five times its initial investment. The original funding was pegged at being in the region of USD 10 mln. Vyatta was originally established in California [...]

Investments in Russian e-commerce portals are still trending as Zoom Capital pumps USD 30 mln into Vseinstrumenti.ru, a site offering retail sales of domestic and industrial tools and appliances. The site, the name of which means ‘all tools’ in the Russian language, is part of the new crop of emerging online retailers that have a dominant [...]

Russian nanotechnology group Rusnano has led a USD 40 mln round of financing for Lilliputian Systems, a maker of portable power solutions for electronic consumer goods. Previous investors in the company include high-profile names like Intel Corporation, Atlas Venture, Fairhaven Capital and Stata Venture Partners, among others. Lilliputian’s first product, the USB MPS (mobile power [...]

Two-year-old Silicon Valley start up Station X has joined hands with early stage Russian VC house Runa Capital. The software company develops products for clinical genome research as well as diagnostics and y-tracer development work. With the partnership in place, Station X will be able to make full use of Runa’s expertise in cloud computing, [...]

GoodData has managed to successfully close its third funding round with USD 25 mln; the round was led by Tenaya Capital, with new investor Next World Capital joining the existing group of investors made up by General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners, Andreessen Horowitz and Windcrest Partners. The funding will go towards sales and marketing initiatives. GoodData (www.gooddata.com) [...]

100% State-owned Russian VC fund RUSNANO has made a successful exit from its investment in erstwhile portfolio company IRE Polus, a part of the world leader in fiber lasers – IPG Photonics.

In a surprise move, 3D visualization technology company Real5D has bagged a USD 1.2 mln Series A round of funding from US VC player DoubleRock. The investment itself is a surprising move considering that the technology has been around for some time, but Real5D seems to have filled a niche that has long been wanting [...]

If you thought the investment landscape was drab and dreary, how about a mash-up between Facebook and Farmville? Farmeron, a Croatian company developing software for keeping profiles of farm animals, has just bagged a round of investment from 500 Startups. The company’s web-based farm management application helped them be a finalist at this year’s Seedcamp [...]

In what could turn out to be a nanotechnology-driven investment spree, RUSNANO this week led and closed a USD 79 mln round of investing in Quantenna Communications. The round was participated in by another new investor, Bright Capital. Other participants are all older investors: Sequoia Capital, DAG Ventures and Sigma Partners are among six other [...]

American energy company SunEdison has just received EUR 155 mln in funding from three top organizations – World Bank Group member IFC, Overseas Private Investment Corporation and UniCredit Bank, Austria – to build a solar plant in Bulgaria with a capacity of 60.4 MWp, at Karadzhalovo. The site has been identified as being in Plovdiv [...]

nScaled, formerly called LegalCloud, has raised USD 7 mln from multiple investors including Almaz Capital and Doughty Hanson in a series A round of financing. The cloud-based ‘Recovery-as-a-Service’ (RaaS) provider will use the funding to increase its data center presence across the world, as well as for software development and sales initiatives. Peter Loukianoff, one [...]

California-based cloud computing firm Eccentex has secured USD 7.5 million in Series-A funding from a group of investors led by Russian investment company VTB Capital. Eccentex will use the money to expand the company’s operations in new geographies and continue developing case management capabilities for a broad set of industries. The investment was made by [...]

Super angel fund Speedinvest, based out of San Francisco, California, and Vienna, Austria, has already made four significant investments since its inception just over six months ago. The diverse investments range from online entertainment services to social media to VoIP vendors. In total, the company has pumped in about EUR 1 mln in these startups. [...]

San Francisco headquartered SaaS-based website security firm StopTheHacker has secured USD 1.1 million in Round-A funding from public and private investors, including early stage Russian venture capital firm Runa Capital and former Bluecoat chief executive Brian NeSmith. StopTheHacker (www.stopthehacker.com) StopTheHacker is a highly specialized web security and malware detection start-up founded by security specialists, industry [...]