E-commerce giant Amazon looks like it is gearing up for the latest chapter in its international expansion: an operation in Russia. According to this article in Forbes (in Russian) the company has opened its first office in the country, headed by Arkady Vitrouk. Vitrouk is the former general director of ABC-Atticus, a publishing group owned by media barron Alexander Mamut. → Read More
The arena of social data comparison has become a hot space over the last, say, three years. With the rise of Facebook and Twitter we have concurrently seen the rise of platforms like Klout and PeerIndex, startups which have pushed the envelope on rating both the content of individuals’ expertise and their influence across a wider social circle. If you want a historical perspective, we no longer… → Read More
Yandex, the “Google of Russia” that runs the country’s dominant search engine along with a number of cloud-based apps, has just announced its quarterly and full-year earnings. And while the company saw one setback in its efforts to expand its presence internationally and on to new platforms like mobile, the mainline figures show that the company continues to grow. In the quarter that ended… → Read More
Google this week fired off one of the first high-profile tests of Russia’s controversial new firewall — erected November 1, 2012 to block child porn, drugs and suicide content; but seen by critics as a route for the government to block whatever else it chooses. Google’s YouTube operation in Russia has filed an appeal against the Russian regulator for blocking YouTube content. The appeal, filed on… → Read More
Apple appears to be inching closer to opening an online store in Russia to manage direct sales to customers, adding one more store to its growing portfolio of localized operations: the company has posted a job ad for a Russian Chat Team Manager, specifically for an Apple Online Store in Russia. → Read More
Europe’s state railways continue to pick up steam in their lawsuits against Apple. Today, it emerged that Russian Railways has filed a trademark lawsuit against the iPhone maker, suing for 2 million roubles ($65,000). The reason is still not entirely clear: the public statement released by the RZD (Russian Railways’ abbreviation in Russian) only notes that the infringement relates to the RZD… → Read More
Another new chapter is opening up for Rocket Internet, the incubator started and run by the Samwer Brothers in Germany. The company is today announcing that PPR, luxury and sport & lifestyle group, is taking a €10 million investment in Bigfoot I, the Rocket holding company that controls Russian fashion commerce site Lamoda, South American fashion site Dafiti and also has a stake in Namshi… → Read More
Russia’s government is looking to reform intellectual property law in the country, a move that could have an effect on how many patents get registered, and on the number of startups in a country known for its star engineers, but less so for business people who can execute on those ideas. → Read More
At long last, Apple appears to be approaching a launch date for iTunes in Russia — and it could come as soon as tomorrow. A tipster has forwarded us an email, in Russian, inviting a small group of people to an iTunes event in Moscow on the evening of December 4. The email does not give much away, simply noting that team iTunes will be holding a musical evening, and that it’s a small… → Read More
Moscow-based online air travel booking startup OneTwoTrip announced this morning that it has raised $9 million in funding from Phenomen Ventures fund in exchange for a minority stake. The site offers Russian travellers a way to book their flights online, providing price comparisons and choice of airline. OneTwoTrip has already managed to gain considerable traction in Russia, launching first in… → Read More
Less than a month after JP Morgan put investments into two Rocket Internet-baked fashion sites modelled on Zappos — an undisclosed investment into Zalando and $45 million in Brazil’s Dafiti, the bank is taking an equity stake in a third Rocket Internet fashion business. Lamoda.ru in Russia, a site with 5 million unique users and 500,000 “loyal customers,” is apparently raising between $40… → Read More
Kayak is expanding into Russia, it seems. Thanks to handy news source LinkedIn (yes, really), one Mr. Andrew Verbitsky changed his profile to read “Managing Director Russia & CIS at KAYAK,” and has apparently held that position since May. The news was spotted by Quintura, which posted details to its blog, also noting that the Kayak.ru domain now forwards to Kayak.com. Verrrry interesting. → Read More
A new chapter today for Rutube, the YouTube of Russia: the user-generated video site, long competing against YouTube in its home market and losing, has redesigned and is now turning itself into more of an aggregator that will host content from Google’s video giant as well as Vimeo, as part of a new content injection that will also include full-length feature films. Rutube has also announced an… → Read More
Yandex may be seen as the anti-Google by pursuing a strategy for growing its search-portal business in Russia and adjacent countries rather than aggressively expanding worldwide, but it is using another route to extend its reach: through investments. Today it confirmed that it has taken a strategic, 25 percent stake in Seimotech, a Russian geophysical exploration company, for $1 million.
This… → Read More
In the aftermath-analysis about what exactly happened in the Facebook IPO, and what it might mean for the future, here’s one side-effect to the east of Nasdaq: Vkontake, the top social network in Russia, which shares a shareholder with Facebook, Mail.ru, has decided to delay its own IPO.
The news was confirmed by the company’s CEO Pavel Durov on Twitter. In Russian, he tweeted, in answer to a… → Read More
It’s not a given that a leader in search can successfully pivot into other areas like social media — just ask Google — but a new service launching in Russia today, from that country’s search leader Yandex, shows one route a company with a lot of smarts can take to make sure they remain a central player in the social game. Today sees the launch of SocialMart, a social shopping startup financed by… → Read More
Russia was once known for its undying adoration for all things French back in the day, and a century and a half later you could argue that some of that spark is still hanging around. New Generation Investment, the Russian VC firm part-owned by Leonid Reiman, former Minister of Communications and Information Technologies, has announced that it would like to start investing into the startup scene in… → Read More
From a slow start in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, Russia is now Europe’s biggest internet market with 53 million users (compared to number-two Germany at 51 million), and figures from GP Bullhound and comScore indicate that it is also growing the fastest, at 14 percent (other European countries are at less than six percent it says). On top of that, a growing base of middle class consumers… → Read More
Russia, like China, is a market full of tech promise, but in the face of strong local competiton, it is one that has also proven to be tough nut to crack for big U.S. companies looking for international growth.
But according to one IT leader in the country — Alexander Turkot, executive director of the IT Cluster at Skolkovo, Russia’s multi-billion dollar Silicon Valley-like work in progess… → Read More
In the debate over whether there can ever exist “another Silicon Valley” and where, exactly, it would be, add in another contender: Skolkovo, an ambitious high-tech sprawl being built outside of Moscow, which this week announced the latest two companies to invest in its big idea: Cisco and Bessemer Venture Partners.
Bessemer has promised investments worth $20 million over the next two years… → Read More
More news from Yandex, Russia’s biggest search engine, that highlights the opportunity for more growth in digital in Russia and adjacent markets. One day after announcing a new real-time search partnership with Twitter, the company is reporting Q4 earnings: sales were at $200 million with net income of $71.3 million, both representing growth respectively of 56 percent and 51 percent on the same… → Read More
A significant step for Twitter in its international growth: Yandex, Russia’s search giant, today announced that it will carry Twitter data in all of its search results.
The news also underscores one possible route to revenue generation for Twitter: Yandex describes this as a licensing deal. The terms of it were not disclosed but Microsoft reportedly paid Twitter $30 million for a similar search… → Read More
The cool cats at A Dangerous Business recently visited a seemingly forgotten Russian arcade museum in Moscow featuring some of the greatest old video games you could ever imagine coming out of a totalitarian worker’s state circa 1983. For example we’re introduced to a game…
called “Репка Силомер” (Repka Silomer) or “Turnip Strength Tester.” Later that night, we showed the photos to… → Read More
A site that, inexplicably, follows Apple’s retail stores, IfoAppleStore.com, posted a rumor that Apple’s top folks went to Russia to negotiate the rental of a two-floor Apple store in the rebuilt Hotel Moskva, the first in the country.
Senior vice president of retail Ron Johnson and vice president of real estate Bob Bridger visited Moscow at the end of March and toured the three-level retail… → Read More
This is said to be Russia’s next-gen tank, the T-95 as the media dubbed it years ago. Don’t ask questions, because there’s isn’t much known about it right now. Well, at least, there’s not that much on the world wide web about the unannounced tank yet. Russia hasn’t even announced the offiical name. → Read More
With the Space Shuttle decommed and pretty much all funding to NASA cut and instead sent to abstinence education, it’s nice to think back on the magical days of yore when a beeping salad bowl could enthrall the world. Sotheby’s is letting us try for a piece of that history thanks to an auction they’re holding of some exciting space gear including this orbiter that once held a… → Read More
Tired of dealing with the legal hassles with Microsoft, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has ordered that all government agencies will be running on open-source software by 2015. Russia has a rocky relationship at times with Microsoft, and started this whole process by first proclaiming that schools will run only open-source software, and now proclaiming that the government would follow suit. → Read More
Yandex, Russia’s leading search engine which is thought to be mulling over an IPO for up to $1.5 billion, is rolling out a new feature today that aims to make its search experience seem a lot more intelligent.
Dubbed “Spectrum” and claiming to be able to read users’ minds, it uses what sounds like a combination of semantic technology and machine learning to “infer implicit queries and return… → Read More
Fighting international cyber-terrorism isn’t easy, but it’s a mission on which we can all agree, right? Not so fast.
Russia has been pushing a proposal in The United Nations agency for information technology, which describes the greatest cyber-threat not as hacking or stealing but as using the Internet to spread ideas that might undermine a country. Russia wants any such use of the Internet… → Read More
A few months ago, I wrote about why I believed that Russia’s planned “science city” was destined for failure, in my BusinessWeek column. I predicted it would follow the path of the hundreds of cluster development projects before it. Political leaders would hold press conferences to claim credit for advancing science and technology; management consultants would earn hefty fees; real-estate… → Read More
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