April 6th, 2011

Online travel company Oktogo.ru raises $5m

Russia’s Oktogo.ru, the online travel company and hotel aggregator, has raised $5m. The round was led by Mangrove Capital, while ABRT and French fund Ventech VC also participated. Additionally, the founder of OLX, Fabrice Grinda and Jose Marin of IG Expansion will be joining the board.

The new investment will be used by Oktogo to pick up more Russian hotels as customers (7,000 apparently)… → Read More

January 26th, 2011

Mangrove Smells Opportunity in Small Businesses, Backs SohoOS with $1.75M

It looks like Mangrove Capital Partners believes in the business opportunity held in helping small businesses, do more, well, business. The Luxembourg-based venture capital firm has invested $1.75M in SohoOS to further propel the company’s small business management suite. Michael Jackson, previously COO of Skype, will take a board seat.

The concept behind SohoOS’s offering is to put business… → Read More

July 2nd, 2010

Mangrove backs Russian beauty coupon site Beaucoup.ru

VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners has invested in Beaucoup.ru, a group purchasing site for all things health and beauty. The word comes from Yakov on the Quintura blog (Mangrove has also backed Quintura).

According to Yakov, the deal size is approximately $1 million, and Direct Group and Global Buying Group reportedly also chipped in. → Read More

April 8th, 2010

MusicMatic buys Mangrove's share in Jamendo, intends to raise more funding

Back in January, TechCrunch Europe broke the news that Luxembourg-based digital music startup Jamendo was running out of money fast and looking for an exit.

Three months later, the company is announcing that European music broadcasting and technology company MusicMatic has purchased the entire stake investor Mangrove Capital Partners held in the startup.

It’s unclear exactly how big Mangrove’s… → Read More

January 25th, 2010

Stealth social game developer Drimmi raises funding from Mangrove, ABRT

Currently still in stealth mode, Moscow-based Drimmi aims to become the number one social game developer and publisher in the Russian Federation. And Mangrove Capital Partners and ABRT Venture Fund are betting money on them succeeding at it, investing “millions” into the startup.

Currently with a team of 20 people, Drimmi aims to use the extra capital to expand the resources spent on games in… → Read More

January 7th, 2010

Digital music startup Jamendo runs out of steam, mulls sale

Jamendo, a community of free, legal music published with Creative Commons licenses, is actively looking to sell to or merge with another company, TechCrunch Europe has learned. Jamendo CEO Laurent Kratz has confirmed rumors that had made their way to Twitter earlier this week.

The reason is fairly simple: Jamendo is running out of money after failing to raise a follow-up round of venture capital. → Read More

December 16th, 2009

Co-founder of Mangrove Capital buys 75% stake in Renault F1 Team, saves it

YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley is not the only familiar name in tech with a financial interest in Formula One.

Yakov over at Quintura lets us know that Genii Capital, a Luxembourg-based investment firm run by Eric Lux (CEO) and Gerard Lopez (Chairman), has acquired a majority stake in Renault F1 Team – 75% according to BBC Sports. → Read More

July 8th, 2009

Jolicloud Raises $4.2 Million, Niklas Zennström And Gilles Samoun Join Board

On the very same day that a certain search and Internet advertising giant based in Mountain View, California has made public its plans to soon bring to market an open-source operating system that it hopes will give Microsoft a run for its money when it comes to powering the netbooks of this world, a lone startup from Paris, France has raised millions in financing to do exactly the same thing. I’m… → Read More

March 17th, 2009

Nonoba Enters The Flash Games Arena With GameRise, A "Ning For Gaming Sites"

We already had HeyZap, the “YouTube for Flash games” and Game Curry, a search engine for Flash games, so not that much of a surprise we now have a “Ning for Flash games” that lets anyone create a gaming website much like Marc Andreessen’s service does the same for social networking sites.

Danish startup / gaming community Nonoba is taking a crack at just that by launching GameRise, a CMS that… → Read More

March 3rd, 2009

Investor Deadpools Jooce. Not Sure They're Aware.

Funny how we receive tips sometimes. Yesterday we covered the latest Startup2Startup meetup, and a certain ChrisATSo33t commented on the story pointing to the latest quarterly report (PDF) of Luxembourg-based VC firm Mangrove Capital Partners in which they state that Paris-based portfolio company Jooce would be “closing its doors” during the month of February.

We’ve now entered the month of… → Read More