Quick News №1

An incredible amount of news is generated every minute in the info-field around us.

There are more and more players in the venture capital market: like particles in the Brownian motion, they move within this field to give birth to new projects, funds and series by colliding with each other.

So we decided every Monday to run over the important news of the past week and the events that influence the venture capital market directly or indirectly, form the context of startups’ life and transform the world around us.

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The last few days have been pleasing with big and important series financing for companies near us.

• Pre-seed investment of $150 000 went to Russian startup WorkoutMe. The deal was made thanks to Around Capital Venture Club, and the money received will be used to refine the app and attract new users. The WorkoutMe app makes it possible to run fitness workouts and find partners for them, and also focuses on short sessions with an average duration of one minute. The company operates in both b2c and b2b sectors.

• One of the rare high-value hybrid deals in the CIS market took place last week. Beri Zaryad (“Take charge”) startup not only raised ₽431M from a group of private investors, but also received a valuation of ₽1.35B. According to sources, investors invested ₽102M in capital, ₽247M in new Beri Zaryad (“Take charge”) stations in Moscow and St Petersburg, and another ₽82M in the buyout of early investors’ stakes.

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Two different IPOs have taken place in the last few days: different not only in terms of the initial sector of work, but also in terms of the exit result.

• During its debut on the stock exchange, Deliveroo’s shares fell 30% — expectations of the biggest IPO on the London Stock Exchange in almost a decade turned out to be its biggest failure.

• In parallel, education platform Coursera had a highly successful initial public offering, raising $517M and valuing its market value at around $4.3B in the offering.

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Meanwhile, investment funds did not stand idly by either.

• The Internet Initiatives Development Fund has invested in Unitourn, a platform for tournaments in mobile games. The startup adapts popular games and runs matches for which participants receive cash rewards for winning. The amount of the investment from IIDF has not been disclosed, while the game sphere development promises strong growth for the project, if things progress favourably, of course.

• At the same time, Tiger Global is launching one of the largest venture capital funds in the world worth $6.7bn. And closer to us, business angel Igor Ryabenkiy’s AltaIR Capital has launched a new international unit for late-stage and pre-IPO investments. The funding focus will remain in the former core areas.

A final piece of good news!

• According to experts and interlocutors at Liga.Tech, Apple may open a representative office in Ukraine in the next six months. Just a year ago Apple Ukraine was registered in Kiev, this year Apple opened three vacancies in the country, and just a month ago it launched the Ukrainian section of its official website. So far the IT giant has been cautious, but hopefully it will soon be possible to visit the official shop rather than resorting to the services of distributors.

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Now we can catch our breath: it’s been an active run. Stay tuned!