Quick News #11

Qvalon, a SaaS business management service for retail chains, raised $700 000 from NRG Ventures, business angels United Investors and others. The funds raised will help the Russian Retail-tech startup to scale in the American market by attracting new clients. “ The thing that won me over to Qvalon, in particular, was the satisfied clients. For example, one of them was so happy that he told me about the solution for more than an hour and a half, listing the problems that the implementation had solved”, notes United Investors lead investor Fedor Chenkov.

Another startup with Russian roots, the online business process automation service Osome, completed a $16M round with the participation of funds such as Target Global, AltaIR Capital, Phystech Ventures and S16VC. The funding will also be used to expand into the US market: they explain this is due to the “ease of doing business in these countries”. The service has taken off amid widespread remote working’: its services are now used by 6 000 customers in Singapore, Hong Kong and the UK.

Another deal in the CIS venture market: Yandex bought video editor Hypee from 4spaces. The application’s functionality, which is planned to be integrated primarily into the Zen platform, will make it possible to promote the corporation’s products due to the popularity of the short vertical video format. Whether Yandex will be able to compete with TikTok is not to be said, but the deal is indicative. It will attract new creators to Zen, which is a trend for the largest platforms that exist by monetizing authors’ content.

Incidentally, Yandex recently increased the amount paid to those who find technical vulnerabilities in their products. Computer security specialists will be paid up to ₽750 000.

And in the Ukrainian venture capital world, the Ukrainian Startup Fund named the winners of the 25th Pitch Day. The six teams selected by the jury at the Pre-seed stage will receive a grant of $25 000 each for project development.

And the last piece of news that’s easy to get lost in. The authorities in El Salvador have officially recognized bitcoin as a legal tender, making it equal to the U.S. dollar. And it seems good: now you can pay with it in any shop. But now taxes will have to be paid as well as on foreign currency.

Have a productive week!