Just days after Texdrive, Russia’s first international startup accelerator, opened in Moscow, the St. Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO) announced in late October the creation of its own startup accelerator in partnership with US venture fund RSV Venture Partners.

Operations will start early in 2012 at the university-hosted startup accelerator, ITMO’s Public Relations manager Yury Shkolnikov told East-West Digital News.

Each startup will benefit from a 3 to 4 month training and mentorship program with the participation of such US and Russian entrepreneurs as US veteran tech investor Esther Dyson, Evernote co-founder Stepan Pachikov, and IBS Group chairman Anatoly Karachinsky, Shkolnikov said.

Selected projects will also receive initial funding of up to $20,000. The best ones will benefit from further financial support of up to $500,000 from the accelerator and possibly other investment partners.

The accelerator’s available funding will total $6 million, of which $1 million will be spent on startups at the seed stage over three years and $5 million will finance later-stage startups, possibly including some startups initially founded outside the accelerator, RSV managing partner Michael Averbach explained to EWDN.

A leading school in information and optical technologies, ITMO claims to be one of the top 12 universities in the Russian Federation. Together with its affiliated business incubator ‘Quattuor Dimensionis,’ ITMO recently hosted a student startup competition in partnership with Norwegian browser software publisher Opera Software.

RSV Venture Partners was created earlier this year by US investors and ITMO University. It focuses on Russian tech companies in their early stages.

Russian Navigation Technologies (RNT), a leading manufacturer and integrator of fleet management solutions and other telematics systems, is continuing its international expansion. The company is holding buyout talks with several Eastern European firms to enter the regional market, RNT General Manager Ivan Nechaev told CNews.ru, a resource covering the IT and telecom markets.

The acquisition of an existing telematics systems company in Eastern Europe would be the best way for RNT to enter Eastern Europe’s otherwise saturated market, Nechaev explained.

RNT is also interested in the US market, where it is seeking a partner to cosponsor its services. The penetration of remote fleet management services in the United States is only a modest 18-22% in the field of commercial transport, according to the company.

The company’s Auto Tracker technology supports both the GLONASS and GPS navigation systems. RNT received support from the Russian government via its affiliated financial structures VTB, a leading bank, and the Russian Venture Company (RVC), the fund of funds dedicated to fostering innovation in Russia.

RNT’s net profit totaled 78.1 million rubles, or $2.6 million, on revenue of 446 million rubles, or $14.6 million, in 2010. Shares of the company began trading on MICEX, the Moscow stock exchange, in July of 2010.

Earlier this year, RNT announced that the story of its formation and growth has been used as a case study in business courses at Stanford and several other US universities.

RNT currently has representative offices in Egypt and Ukraine. The firm also operates in other former Soviet republics as well as in several Asian, Latin American, and North African countries. However, revenues from RNT’s international operations  accounted for only 5% of all its revenues in 2010.

Source: CNews.ru