The MCI Group, which is riding high on its 2012 achievements of PLN41.6 mln in consolidated net profits, is in the process of finalizing a 20 per cent acquisition of Indeks Bilgisayar Sistemleri Mühendislik Sanayi ve Ticaret, the largest distributor of IT products and services in Turkey. This will be MCI’s first investment in the [...]

In a major agreement, website builder uCoz will take over all of Yandex’s Narod websites, which number over 2 mln. The transaction is based on Yandex seeing a need for the complex tools and processes that uCoz can offer; the deal will make the latter the biggest website hosting and building company in Russia, with [...]

Intel and Greycroft Partners have jointly invested USD10 mln in Fortumo, an Estonian mobile payment solutions provider seeking growth investment. The target company was formerly owned in majority by parent company MobiSolutions, which will continue to remain a shareholder. As part of its major operations ramp-up, Fortumo has entered into independent  agreements with China Mobile [...]

It’s a hattrick for IMI.VC Russia as they invest a third time in Game Insight, a domestic mobile gaming network that caters to over 140 million people. This time around, they have invested USD25 mln, which puts the target company’s value at around USD550 mln – previous investments in the gaming company were made in [...]

Lithuanian VC fund Practica Capital has provided a seed funding of EUR 180,000 to 3D graphics marketplace CGTrader. CGTrader’s offering is similar to that of GrabCAD, an Estonian designer community for 3D artists, but differs in that it provides a marketplace for designers to sell their work to the public. With a user base of [...]

Augmented Reality is on a roll in Ukraine. Last October Google acquired Viewdle via Motorola Mobility. Earlier this month, A-Reality another AR firm successfully raised USD 70k

There may come a time, quite soon when Ukraine’s default and somewhat adverse label as an “outsourcing country” fades into the past. A-Reality, a Ukrainian IT firm specialized in augmented reality technology aims to change the current recognition of the country. The company has received USD 75000 from an individual investor, Eugenia Dubinskaya of Best Business Group. The seed fund enables [...]

Qiwi, a leading payment solutions provider in the Russian market, will launch a venture division to support companies that develop products and services for its primary markets. The announcement comes weeks ahead of its IPO slated for Spring of 2013. Qiwi stakeholders are already experienced in VC funding; among them is Andrey Romanenko, the co-owner and [...]

Networking giant Cisco has made a strategic move in the Czech Republic by acquiring Cognitive Security, a small software startup that was incubated at the Czech Technical University and funded by Certicon and later by Credo Ventures and Richard Seewald. The 28-member team at Cognitive will come on board Cisco’s Security Technology Group (headed by [...]

Amazon has recently acquired Polish TTS (Text-to-Speech) technology company Ivona as part of value addition services for the visually impaired. The relationship between the two companies is not new; Amazon has already been using Ivona’s technology for its Kindle users. Ivona (www.ivona.com) Ivona is a Polish company founded originally as Ivo Software in 2001. The [...]

Tech investment company Riverside has concluded another deal, this time an investment into Bohemia Interactive Simulations, a market leader in gaming and simulation technology for military, emergency and mission-critical clients. The company already supplies technology and training services to the defense departments of the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. Its flagship product, a fully interactive [...]

Parallels, a Russian virtualization and automation services company and a global leader in its field, has bagged an equity investment from Cisco. The two companies are no stranger to each other, because Almaz Capital, which was set up with the help of Cisco, has already made an investment in the company in 2009. The American [...]

Cellrox, an Israeli start-up in the mobile services domain, has bagged a USD 4.7 mln round of funding during its Series A round. Led by Runa Capital, the company’s existing investors are also participating in the round. They include Columbia Technology Ventures and Previz Venture Partners, among others. The funding will be used to extend its OEM [...]

Polish mobile games developer Tequila Mobile has raised nearly USD 500,000 (PLN 2 mln) in funding from SATUS Ventures and a SATUS-backed Polish seed fund called Accelerator AI NOT. The investment coincided with Tequila’s announcement about the launch of Tequila Games, a new studio dedicated to developing games. The core business, a gaming developers’ platform that [...]

An “innovation city”, or Innopolis, has been given the green flag in the Republic of Tatarstan near Kazan, the capital city, in the form of a commitment to invest in transport and engineering infrastructure. The project has been allocated a budget of around USD 670 mln, with Tatarstan footing a major portion of the bill; other [...]

The Russian equivalent of mobile payment service Square, called Life-Pay, has recently announced a USD 2.6 mln round of funding by VC player Life.Sreda. The service allows customers to use an Android or iOS application and a free card-reader to upload cash to their mobile accounts using their credit cards. Pre-registration is currently open, and [...]

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 [...]

A new venture fund dedicated to supporting companies that use quantum technology and materials, called the Quantum Wave Fund (QWave), will be launched shortly with around USD 100 mln under management. The investors include Russians Sergei Beloussov, Sergei Kouzmine and other prominent investors and scientists. The fund will target companies working with data networks, optical transistors, [...]

Brand new Russian VC fund Cloud4Auto has made its first investment, in bright box, developers of an application called DealerMobility. The target company will receive approximately EUR 210,000 in funding, as well as expertise in areas such as marketing and sales. The application has been designed for smartphones operating on Windows Phone, iOS and Android [...]

Though competition is stiff in the ‘app builder’ sector, only a few of them receive funding of any considerable size. My-Apps.com has made a significant breakthrough by taking on board Russia-based financial group Life. The USD 1.5 mln investment takes total funding for the company up to USD 1.8 mln, with the remaining 300,000 coming [...]