Yandex kick-starts its own startup eco-system – seed funds Zenmoney.ru

Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher is the European Editor for TechCrunch. A former grunge rock drummer, he became a long time journalist, and has since written for UK national newspapers and magazines including The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, The Daily Telegraph and The New Statesman. Mike is also a co-founder and shareholder of TechHub, a co-working space/service/community with several locations... → Learn More

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

Recently floated Russian search engine Yandex has been busy looking for startups to fund and acquire, thus creating it’s own eco-system around it. Today it’s financing the Zenmoney project – a personal accounting and budget planning service. Financing (amounts undisclosed) will be provided under Yandex.Factory, the company’s investment program which launched in April 2011.

It’s a quick funding. Zenmoney team only presented their project on March 15th, 2011 at Yandex.Start, Yandex’s open-door event for startups. As Yandex blogs today the startup will use the Yandex search API.

The next Yandex.Start will be held on June 28 and has had over 600 applications, which rather suggests there’s a bit of tech boom going on amongst Russian startups right now.