Quick News №18

Three rounds caught our attention last week. Two Ukrainian startups received investments during this time. First, the VRpartments project received a grant from the Polish incubator Unicorn Hub. The $310 000 received will be spent on the development of VR technology for real estate, marketing and entering foreign markets.

Legal Nodes, an online legal platform, raised a pre-seed round of $300 000. It was helped by angel syndicate LIFT99. The funders plan to build a full-scale cloud-based legal subscription platform and enter the UK market.

A major investment of $35M was received by Novakid, an English language learning platform with founders from Russia. Owl Ventures and Goodwater Capital led round B, with participation from LETA Capital, PortfoLion, TMT Investments, Xploration Capital and LearnStart. A distinctive feature of the platform is the gamification of the process, the use of VR technology and the mass online role-playing model.

But another online English language school, KESPA, was bought by 30% by education platform Skillbox. Along with the stake, the service received an option to acquire additional shares. The deal will allow Skillbox to expand its product range: it plans to create adapted English programmes for marketers, designers, programmers and others.

This year’s IPO market is full of interesting developments. Among the upcoming ones, the owner of TikTok, ByteDance, is planning a previously cancelled IPO. The event was cancelled due to Chinese regulators who were concerned about the security of user data. But the problems are promised to be resolved, and the IPO will take place no matter what.

The Russian real estate listing service Cian is also going to go there, to the stock exchange. He plans to become a public company as early as 2021. A partner of the service’s major shareholder states that the company’s asset may be valued at $1B.

We conclude our Quick News with the traditionally interesting opportunities for startups. The first Russian accelerator for Big Data projects is being launched by the Skolkovo Foundation. The program will be of interest to technological startups or student projects with solutions in the area of Big Data from the MVP stage and above, and the final financial equivalent of the services provided under the program will be more than ₽1.6M for each participating company. Learn more on the project’s page.

Have a productive week!