Monthly Archives: October 2011

Russian state invests in US clouds

By East-West Digital News / Oct 26, 2011

Russian Venture Company (RVC), the state owned fund of funds dedicated to innovation, announced last week it has been an indirect participant in a $250 million series B financing for Dropbox, a leading US cloud storage startup.

The investment was made through Institutional Venture Partners XIII (IVP), a prominent later stage venture capital and growth equity firm which was joined in 2010 by Russian Venture Capital II LP, a fully owned subsidiary of RVC registered in the UK.

Dropbox users can store and share documents, photos, video and other files on the site. The files remain accessible from any computer or phone. Dropbox claims over 45 million users around the globe that save more than a million files every five minutes.

Among Dropbox investors are also Index Ventures – which led the round of financing – Benchmark Capital, Goldman Sachs, Greylock Partners, RIT Capital Partners, and Valiant Capital Partners. Early investors Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Hadi and Ali Partovi also participated in the round.

Since the beginning of this year, IVP XIII has invested in Sugar Inc., a global media company for women, Clearspring Technologies, a US based online data giant, Shazam, a developer of popular applications for mobile devices, and One Kings Lane, a leading US flash sales site on the home furnishings market.

Last year, RVC’s fully owned subsidiary Russian Venture Capital I LP invested $10 million inBrightSource Energy, Inc., a provider of solar power thermal systems.

 

source:http://www.ewdn.com/2011/10/26/russian-state-invests-in-us-clouds/

Russian VoIP service Sipnet stronger than Skype on the domestic market

By Ekaterina Preobrazhenskaya, East-West Digital News / Oct 25, 2011

Sipnet, a Russian VoIP service provider, reached a 52% share of the Russian VoIP market in 2010 in value, according to J’son & Partners, a telecom market research and financial consulting firm operating in Eastern Europe. Skype held second place in Russia with a 32% market share. The total market size for VoIP doubled since 2010 and is now estimated to be $29.2 million.

“The number of users of P2P networks like Sipnet and Skype has increased 82% and now equals 11.3 million people,” Russian business daily Vedomosti quoted Vitaly Solonin of J’son & Partners as saying.

“Skype is the undisputed leader in P2P, serving 70% of VoIP users, while Sipnet is used by only 13% of customers (1.5 million people),” Solonin added. However, Sipnet’s user base is mostly corporate clients, which is why the average income per person for Sipnet users is higher than for Skype. During Q1 2011, Sipnet’s average revenue per user was around $60, while Skype average worldwide figure didn’t exceed $0.11, according to Solonin.

Sipnet is not the only VoIP operator doing better than Skype in terms of ARPU. Rebtel, a Stockholm-based company which claims to be the world’s second largest VoIP company after Skype with its 13 million users, announced earlier this year that its ARPU reached $4.00 in 2010.

 

source:http://www.ewdn.com/2011/10/25/russian-voip-service-sipnet-stronger-than-skype-on-the-domestic-market/

President Medvedev opens a Facebook account

By East-West Digital News / Oct 21, 2011

Russian President and tech lover Dmitry Medvedev announced yesterday on Twitter that he has opened a Facebook account.

24 hours later, Medvedev had been “liked” by over 2,800 Facebook users, but his Friend Activity page displayed only a news story – dated, for strange reasons, from late August 2011 – about his meeting with Bielorussian president Alexander Lukashenko.

The Russian president opened his Twitter account in June 2010. The account won an award at a Russian blogger contest earlier this year.

While Medvedev’s tweets are in Russian language, he has apparently chosen English to communicate on Facebook.

 

 

source:http://www.ewdn.com/2011/10/21/president-medvedev-opens-a-facebook-account/

Mail.ru Group accused of “massive bribery” by Vkontakte.ru co-founder

By East-West Digital News / Oct 18, 2011

According to Vkontakte.ru’s co-founder and General Manager Pavel Durov, “Mail.ru Group’s ad sales teams give bribes to ad buyers openly and at a massive scale.” Durov posted the accusation in a discussion on Facebook yesterday, according to the online business publication Marker.ru and IT news and forum site Roem.ru.

An LSE-listed Russian Internet company, Mail.ru Group owns two other social networks – Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir, placing it in competition with Vkontakte, the market leader. But Mail.ru Group also owns a 40% stake in Vkontakte.

Durov’s relations with his Mail.ru Group partners have been deteriorating. In March of this year, Durov proclaimed the idea of fully integrating his site to Mail.ru Group, suggested just days before by the group’s General Manager Dmitry Grishin, as “utopian.”

In July, Durov referred to Mail.ru Group as a “trash holding“ on Twitter. The message was accompanied by a disrespectful photo of Durov’s “official answer to Mail.ru Group’s last attempt to absorb Vkontakte.” Durov also condemned Mail.ru’s file hosting service, ‘files.mail.ru,’ as “a tasteless warehouse of viruses and warez,” thus justifying the fact that Vkontakte had blocked access to it.

The bribery accusations will hardly come as a surprise to observers of the Russian advertising market, which is admittedly far from for being transparent.

 

source:http://www.ewdn.com/2011/10/18/mail-ru-group-accused-of-massive-bribery-by-vkontakte-ru-co-founder/

Yandex TV widget embedded in Samsung SmartTV

By East-West Digital News / Oct 19, 2011

 

Global high tech product leader Samsung and Russian search giant Yandex announced yesterday that Yandex search services have been integrated in Samsung Smart TVs sold in Russia and other CIS countries.

Samsung Smart TVs sold in these countries now have Yandex as the default search engine with the portal’s front page set up as the default homepage. Moreover, the units feature a Yandex TV widget, which offers access to all services available on the front page of Yandex.ru, including Yandex.Traffic, Yandex.Afisha, Yandex.News and Yandex.TV. Continually updated information, such as currency exchange rates, road conditions, news or movie listings can now be viewed directly on the TV screen, during commercial breaks, for instance.

 

All Yandex services offer information based on the viewers location and are adapted for viewing on a TV screen.

No ads will be displayed, Yandex spokesman Ochir Madzhikov said to East-West Digital News. “Our mission is to answer questions – both implicit and explicit – at all times and in all places. Television is becoming a channel to get answers.”

In what both companies declare as a “strategic partnership,” Yandex services will also be available on Samsung bada 2.0 powered smartphones in the near future.

“The time when the computer was the only device for browsing the internet is long past. Web services and applications are now available on various mobile devices, smartphones and game consoles. Together with the Samsung team, we are continuing to evaluate what services are appropriate for each device to provide an optimal experience for the user,” said Elena Dobrokhotova, Director of Operational Marketing at Yandex.

But Yandex press service could not comment on whether these services would be embedded in Samsung’s mobile phones or simply offered as downloadable mobile applications.

Yandex search services have also been made available on LG televisions since November 2010 and have been integrated within BWM dashboard electronics since December 2010.

 

source:http://www.ewdn.com/2011/10/19/yandex-tv-widget-embedded-in-samsung-smarttv/