HomeMe, a Russian online shoppoing mall for home and living, has raised $5 million from Mangrove Capital, ABRT and AddVenture. Mangrove partner David Waroquier, who is on the Board of HomeMe, has confirmed the investment. According to RBC Daily, the venture capital funds Mangrove, ABRT and AddVenture have obtained a 40% stake in HomeMe.

HomeMe.ru was launched in 2012. HomeMe, which has a show room in Moscow, plans to allow its users to select furniture in a virtual, 3D room on its web-site. HomeMe founder Oleg Pay previously started home furniture online store MySofaShop, which is merged under HomeMe.

The Russian home furniture market is valued at $7 billion, of which online is estimated at $400 million per year.

In Russian e-commerce, Mangrove Capital previosuly invested in travel and hotel booking site Oktogo.ru and online shoppoing club KupiVIP.ru.

It’s unusual when a venture capital firm supports charity projects.

Mangrove Foundation, an initiative of Mangrove Capital Partners, supports two causes: environment and women empowerment. To go global, Mangrove Foundation has partnered with Lotus F1 Team for 2012 Formula 1 World Championship season.

For the beginning, the logo of Mangrove Foundation features on the nose of E20, a car of Lotus F1, for the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona this weekend.

Mangrove Foundation is managed by Hugo Mahieu of Mangrove Capital Partners. Being a regular traveler to Africa and Asia, Hugo monitors the projects to which Mangrove Foundation donates and looks for people with passion to set up new ones to try making our planet a better place to live in.

Mangrove Foundation currently supports the following projects: Les Amis De Gambie (an educational project in Gambia), SOS Sahel (a re-foresting project in Senegal), Lanao (a mangrove forest restoration in Philippines) and Into Eden (a new documentary by Leila Conners),

In Russia, Mangrove Capital holds equity stakes in Oktogo.ru (Russia’s leading hotel booking and travel site), KupiVIP.ru (the leading online shopping club and e-commerce platform in Russia) and Drimmi (a social and mobile gaming company). Mangrove Capital is associated with Lotus F1 Team via Genii Capital of Mangrove‘s partner Gerard Lopez.

The internet business incubators are the new black.

In April 2012, Russia’s VTB Capital and German Otto Group-backed eVenture Capital invested $25 million in Moscow-based internet business incubator Fast Lane Ventures. VTB Capital led the Series C round in Fast Lane with $18 million investment.

Berlin-based internet business incubator Rocket Internet is getting some $200 milllion investment from Access Industries of the Russian-American industrial investor Len Blavatnik.

Access Industries previously backed Rocket Internet’s portfolio companies Glossybox, Pinspire and WestWing as well as Moscow-operated Get Taxi and Vigoda.ru.

Yuri Milner has become the first Russian to be named to the Forbes Midas List for the second year in a row.

Forbes named Yuri Milner #29 at the Midas List of 2012′s top 100 tech investors.

Yuri Milner‘s firm DST Global has invested in social media companies Facebook, Zynga, Twitter and Groupon as well as in Spotify, Airbnb, Klarna, ZocDoc, 360buy.com and others.

2012′s top 10 tech investors in Forbes Midas List are Jim Breyer of Accel Partners, Marc Andreessen of Andreessen Horowitz, Reid Hoffman of Greylock Partners, Daviz Sze of Greylock Partners, Peter Fenton of Benchmark Capital, Josh Kopelman of First Round Capital, Paul Madera of Meritech Capital Partners, Peter Thiel of Founders Fund, Kevin Efrusy of Accel Partners and Jeremy Levine of Bessemer Venture Partners.

See a list of top 10 Russian venture capital investments in 2012.

The largest Russian free online classifieds site Avito.ru has raised $75 million from Baring Vostok and Accel Partners. The previous investors Investment AB Kinnevik and Northzone Partners also participated in the round. The investmenet banking firm GP Bullhound advised Avito.ru. The new investment will be used for marketing purposes.

Launched in 2007, Avito.ru raised $26 million from Kinnevik and Northzone in November 2010. Avito.ru, which has 30 million monthly visitors, reported revenues of $10 million last year. Avito.ru is headed by CEO Jonas Nordlander.

Naspers’ MIH Allegro acquired Slando, a leading free online classifieds site in Russia and Ukraine, for $29 million in 2011. Naspers owns the majority stake in free online classifieds site OLX, which has a strong position in Russia.

Baring Vostok Capital Partners (BVCP) previously invested in Yandex and OZON.ru. Baring Vostok is also an investor in 1C, Russia’s largest software vendor.

See a list of top 10 Russian venture capital investments in 2012.

The European early-stage vemture capital firms including Paris/Israel-based Kima Ventures of Jérémie Berrebi, Amsterdam-based Amber Venture Partners of Roeland Boonstoppel and New York-based French ‘super angel’ Fabrice Grinda have invested in MallStreet.ru, online mall in Russia.

Founded in 2009, MallStreet.ru is headed by the founding team of Sergey Ivanov, Dmitry Shashkin and Alexey Kuzmichev.

In Russia, Fabrice Grinda has invested in Oktogo.ru and Wikimart.

Yandex, via its Yandex.Factory (Яндекс.Фабрика) startup funding initiative, has invested in Citrea, online text editing tool, according to Yandex blog. The investment should be in the range of $50,000.

Based in Yekaterinburg, Citrea develops online service where text can be crowd-edited by several persons. The Citrea team first met Yandex at Yandex.Start (Яндекс.Старт) event in Yekaterinburg last December. Citrea is in “stealth” mode.

Yandex.Factory previously invested in Timebooker, Refine.io, Zenmoney.ru, and few other startups.

See a list of top 10 Russian venture capital investments in 2012.

What is in common between football (soccer) and venture capital? Now, we know. Marc Ingla, former vice chairman of FC Barcelona who managed sponsorship, media and football affairs at Barça for five years, has joined Mangrove Capital Partners, the premier European early-stage venture capital firm, as its new Partner.

Marc Ingla was very instrumental in appointment of Josep ‘Pep’ Guardiola as manager of FC Barcelona in 2008 under whom the club won two UEFA Champions League and three Spainsh La Liga titles.

Mangrove Capital Partners has also launched a new corporate web-site at www.mangrove-vc.com. The Flash-based web-site is powered by Wix, one of Mangrove‘s portolio companies.

In Russia, Mangrove Capital has invested in Oktogo.ru (leading hotel booking and travel site), KupiVIP.ru (leading online shopping club and e-commerce platform), Drimmi (social and mobile gaming) and several other undisclosed companies.

Mangrove Capital is associated with Lotus F1 Team, which is owned by Genii Capital of Mangrove‘s partner Gerard Lopez.

See a list of top 10 Russian venture capital investments in 2012.

DFJ VTB Capital Aurora Innovation & Nanotechnology Fund, a $100 million fund that is 50/50 financed by RUSNANO and VTB Capital and is managed by VTB Capital, has invested in nanotechnology start-ups: US/Russian Rolith and German/Russian SmS Tenzotherm, reported newspaper Vedomosti.

DFJ VTB Capital Aurora has led a $5 million round of financing in Rolith. Other investors included Asahi Glass Company of Japan. Rolith raised seed funding from Asahi in 2010.

Founded in 2008, Rolith develops nanostructured coatings for solar energy, green building, solid state lighting and efficient display products using a proprietary nanolithography technology. Rolith, Inc. is headed by the founder and CEO Boris Kobrin. He has PhD in Physics from the Institute of Chemical Physics in Moscow.

DFJ VTB Capital Aurora has invested $6 million in SmS Tenzotherm. Dortmund, Germany-headquartered, SmS Tenzotherm was founded by Vladimir Kaminski (Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, St. Petersburg) and Dmitri Yakovlev (Technical University, Dortmund). SmS Tenzotherm develops strain gauge sensors based on samarium sulphide.

See a list of top 10 Russian venture capital investments in 2012.

Home Shopping Europe GmbH, the parent company of the German teleshopping channel HSE24, has entered the Russian teleshopping market by purchasing a 49% stake in Shopping Live, a Russian teleshopping channel, and 100% stake in Direct Trade, which operates the retail part of the shopping channel Shopping Live.

Home Shopping Europe has purchased shares in Shopping Live and Direct Trade from the Russian internet business incubator Fast Lane Ventures and the Russian investors around Oskar Hartmann (founder and CEO of Russia’s leading online shopping club KupiVIP.ru). The management of Shopping Live and Oskar Hartmann will continue holding the remaining shares in Shopping Live. The foreign investors can hold no more than 49% shares in a Russian TV channel under the Russian Media Act.

Launched in July 2011, Shopping Live reaches 7.5 million out of 53 million Russian TV households via satellite and cable. According to National Mail Order Business Association (NADT), the Russian teleshopping market was valued at EUR 200 million in 2010.

Munich, Germany-headquartered Home Shopping Europe reported sales of EUR 470 million last year. 20% of sales came from online commerce. In June 2011, HSE24 was launched in Italy.

Here is a list of top 10 VC deals in Russia in Q1 2012.

The Russian venture capital investments are ranked by deal value.

1. $30 million in Wikimart by Tiger Global and Russian investors

2. $10 million in Oktogo.ru by VTB Capital, Mangrove Capital and Ventech

3. $10 million in IM+ by Finam

4. $7.5 million in Eccentex by VTB Capital and others

5. $7.5 million in nScaled by Almaz Capital and others

6. $4.3 million in Heverest.ru by eVenture Capital and Russian investors

7. $4 million in MoeDelo by Klever Asset Management

8. N/D in Forex Club by Quadro Capital Partners

9. N/D in Hepatera by High-Tech Gründerfonds and Maxwell Biotech

10. N/D in Dulton Media (Eagle.Platform and ЯTV) by Prostor Capital

See a list of top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

Germany’s leading venture capital firm High-Tech Gründerfonds and Russian Venture Capital – funded Maxwell Biotech Venture Fund have invested in Hepatera, a Russian startup that develops drugs for the prevention and treatment of liver diseases, and its German partner company MYR GmbH. The new investment will be used for clinical trial program.

Founded in September 2011, Hepatera (Гепатера) develops Myrcludex B, a drug that is aimed at the treatment of chronic viral hepatitis B and D. Hepatera develops the drug in close partnership with MYR. Last December, Hepatera became a resident of the Biomedical Cluster at Skolkovo Innovation Center.

Founded by Dr. Alexander Alexandrov in 2010, MYR holds the worldwide exclusive product rights for Myrcludex B. Based near Hannover, MYR is focused on the coordination of a network of academic partners and vendors involved in Myrcludex’s development. In May 2011, High-Tech Gründerfonds invested EUR 0.5 million in MYR for Phase 1 of its clinical testing at the University Clinic Heidelberg after completion of its pre-clinical studies.

Launched in late 2008, Maxwell Biotech Venture Fund, which has $100 million capital under management, has invested in OncoMax (oncology), NeuroMax (CNS), MetaMax (oncology and metabolic diseases), Infectex (infectious diseases), CardioNova (cardiovascular diseases), Hepatera (liver diseases) and Photonics (novel lasers for medicine and dentistry).

The Russian SaaS accounting service company Moe Delo has raised $4 million from Klever Internet Investments Limited, part of private equity firm Klever Asset Management, the company announced. Launched in 2009, the Russian online bookkeeping service MoeDelo is headed by the founders Maxim Yaremko (CEO) and Sergey Panov (Chairman of the Board). Moe Delo has more than 170,000 registered accounts of which 45,000 were active users in March 2012. The users of Moe Delo pay a monthly fee of between 540 Roubles ($18) and 5,000 Roubles ($167).

The leading Russian accounting and ERP software vendor for small and medium-sized (SMB) businesses 1C Company has invested an undisclosed amount in exchange for a 51 percent stake in Megaplan, a Russian SaaS provider of task management and CRM solutions, Megaplan announced. As a result of the deal, Megaplan‘s investor IQ One will hold a 25 percent stake in the company. Launched in 2008, Megaplan has more than 2,400 paid customers among SMB. Its customer base quadripled in 2011. Over 9,600 customers use Megaplan for free. Megaplan was started by Utinet.ru founders Mikhail Ukolov, Mikhail Smolyanov and David Galoyan.

According to Gartner, SaaS revenue is Eastern Europe is projected to reach $169.4 million in 2012, up from $135.5 million last year.

Rambler recently invested in online event registration service TimePad and Yandex invested in online service booking TimeBooker.

See a list of top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

Lotus F1 Team driver Kimi Räikkönen has become an ambassador of Angry Birds Space, a new game from Rovio.

“The Iceman meets The Ice Bird” its slogan says.

2007 Formula One World Champion Kimi Räikkönen, who now drives for the Lotus F1 Team, will be spotting an Angry Birds design on his team cap during the Formula One 2012 season.

The Finnish entertainment media company Rovio and Kimi Räikkönen, who is also from Finland, will be collaborating on co-branded Angry Birds Space clothing that will be sold through the Angry Birds online shop later this spring.

Angry Birds Space is a brand new game from Rovio, featuring interstellar gameplay ranging from slow-motion puzzles to lightspeed destruction.

The Angry Birds have also been transformed into superheroes, including the new character Ice Bird, which will be featured on Kimi‘s cap. Angry Birds Space should be available for iOS, Android, PC, and Mac from March 22. Like in many other countries, the game has become #1 paid app ai iTunes App Store in Russia.

Perhaps, Russia’s answer to Rovio‘s Angry Birds, the Om Nom character of Cut the Rope game of Moscow-based Zeptolab shall partner with Vitaly Petrov, former Lotus Renault GP Team driver who now drives for Caterham F1 Team.

The leading Russian online hotel booking and travel site Oktogo.ru has announced that it raised $10 million from VTB Capital, Mangrove Capital Partners, Ventech Capital and ABRT. Russia’s largest bank VTB asset management arm VTB Capital was the lead investor in the round. The new investment will be used to expand Oktogo.ru‘s hotel database in Russia and for marketing and brand awareness purposes.

In addition, Philip Wolf, Founder and Chairman of PhoCusWright joined Oktogo.ru‘s Board as Independent Director. Launched in 1994, PhoCusWright, which has become the leading global travel market research company, was acquired by Northstar Travel Media in 2011.

Founded in 2010, Oktogo.ru has the largest hotel offering for both Russian and foreign travelers in the country with over 2,500 hotels in Russia in its database and over 140,000 hotels worldwide. Oktogo.ru previously raised $5 million from Mangrove Capital, Ventech, ABRT and business angel investors including Javier Perez-Tenessa (ODIGEO and eDreams), Fabrice Grinda (OLX) and Jose Marin (IG Expansion). Oktogo.ru‘s annual revenues shall triple to $30 million in 2011.

Oktogo.ru, which is based in St. Petersburg and Moscow, is headed by the founder and CEO Marina Kolesnik. Having obtained MBA from Harvard, Marina Kolesnik previously helped build DataArt and develop Mail.ru.

Russia will host 2014 Winter Olympics and 2018 FIFA World Cup. Both events are supported by multi-billion government and private investments into domestic travel inrastructure. Oktogo.ru will help create online infrastructure to support the offline market developments. The Russian online hotel booking market is expected to reach $3 billion in 2015.

The London-based Seedrs has won the Startup Competition at London Web Summit (LWS) today on March 19, 2012. The four startup finanlists who presented on the main stage of LWS were integrating dashboard for cloud-based apps BusyFlow, BoxCryptor, Seedrs and Six3. The runner-up was BusyFlow.

Seedrs
“An online platform for investing in startups. Seedrs will be a platform for individual investors to invest directly in the equity of startups they choose. We will give entrepreneurs a seamless way to raise their first capital from friends, family and the crowds, and we will provide both high net worth and mass affluent investors simple access to startups as an asset class. Think Kickstarter with returns rather than donations, or Zopa with equity rather than debt.”

The winner has got a prize of GBP 50,000 in a convertible loan from DFJ Esprit, GBP 15,000 in legal services from Orrick, GBP 15,000 in advisory services from KPMG and GBP 3,000 in products from HP.

In total, twenty startups presented to judges at LWS in the morning.

While Google is going to provide more direct answers to users’ queries, the leading Russian search engine, Yandex, has launched a new advertising campaign on major Russian TV channels called “Ответы на все случаи жизни” (Answers for all occasions). The competition for Russian search market share between Yandex and Google should be heating up.

Top 30 Russian internet company, Wikimart has raised $30 million from Tiger Global and financial investor from Russia. Tiger Global, which owns a majority stake in Wikimart, invested $18 million.The Russian online mall Wikimart.ru was valued at $50 million pre-money. As a result, Tiger Global will own 55% of Wikimart while the founders will own 23% and the Russian investor will own 15% stake in the company, according to newspaper Kommersant. The remaining 7% is part of stock option plan and business angel holdings.

Wikimart.ru, which generated a gross sales turnover of $90 million in 2011, will use new investment to set up fulfilment centers. Wikimart previously raised $12 million from Tiger Global and $1 million from business angel investors.

Founded in 2008, Wikimart is headed by the co-founders and co-CEOs, Maxim Faldin and Kamil Kurmakaev. The Russian online mall Wikimart.ru was launched in early 2009. Wikimart.ru currently has some 200,000 daily visitors.

Wikimart is chaising the leading Russian online shop OZON.ru and online shopping club & e-commerce platform KupiVIP.ru, which both raised massive rounds in 2011. OZON.ru, which raised $100 million in September 2011, recently purchased online shoe store Sapato.ru. Bessemer, Balderton and Russia Partners invested $55 million in KupiVIP.ru in April 2011.

The Russian e-commerce market, which was valued at more than $10 billion in 2011, is expected to reach $35 billion in 2015.

See a list of top 10 web startups from Russia.

The leading Russian search engine company Yandex has released Yandex.Navigator, a free satellite navigation app for iPhone/iPad and Android with turn-by-turn voice directions in Russia and Ukraine, the company announced. Yandex already has Yandex.Maps and Yandex.Traffic apps. Yandex.Navigator app is based on the mapping service Yandex.Maps which continually updates its content providing drivers with up-to-date maps and road grids. Yandex.Navigator has detailed maps of over 500 cities in Russia and Ukraine.

The free mobile application for drivers, Yandex.Navigator features:

- automatic routing for Russia and Ukraine;
- automatic route re-calculation;
- 2D/3D modes and vector map for Moscow;
- search for locations, addresses and amenities including drug stores, ATMs, gas stations etc.;
- adding addresses to favorites;
- warnings about traffic conditions (accidents, roadworks, etc.) and speed cameras;
- night mode;
- additional information about buildings and other places on the map.

It’ll be interesting to see if Yandex.Navigator app is going to undercut paid navigation apps of iGO (NNG), Navigon (Garmin), Navitel and Sygic.

There are two tech billionaires from Russia on Forbes list of the World’s Billionaires.

According to Forbes Billionaires list, Valentin Gapontsev has a net worth of $1.1 billion and Yuri Milner has a net worth of $1 billion.

Dr. Valentin Gapontsev founded IPG Photonics in 1990 when he was 51. In the 1990s, Dr. Gapontsev immigrated first to Germany then to the United States. IPG Photonics develops and manufactures high-performance fiber lasers and amplifiers for material processing, telecom and medicine. IPG Photonics went public on NASDAQ in late 2006. For 2011, IPG Photonics reported net income of $118 million on total revenues of $475 million. The revenues increased 59% year-on-year.

Yuri Milner‘s internet investment firm DST has stakes in Facebook, Zynga, and Groupon as well as in Twitter, Spotify, Airbnb, Klarna, ZocDoc, 360buy.com and others. Yuri Milner personally invest in start-up program participants selected by the incubator Y Combinator. Forbes calls Yuri Milner “the savvy internet investor every tech investor wants to emulate”.

See a list of top 10 web startups from Russia.

Samwer brothers’ Rocket Internet-launched Glossybox has raised funding from Access Industries of Len Blavatnik. As a result, Access Industries obtained a 7% stake in GlossyBox. Its shareholders include Rocket Internet (57.5%), Kinnevik (24%), and Holtzbrinck Ventures (5%).

Similar to BirchBox in the U.S. and JolieBox in France, Glossybox sends its subscribers a box with samples of beauty products for EUR 10 per month. There is Glossybox for men. Glossybox is yet to be launched in Russia.

Access Industries recently invested in Rocket Internet-launched startups Pinspire (which is similar to Pinterest) and shopping club Westwing. The Russian-American industrialist Len Blavatnik is #72 on Forbes billionaires list with a net worth of $11.9 billion.

In 2011, Access Industries invested in Russian daily deal service Vigoda.ru and mobile taxi service GetTaxi.

March 8 is Women’s Day in Russia.

The holiday has been first celebrated in St. Petersburg. It was 99 years ago.

Here is a list of top 10 Russian female internet entrepreneurs:

1. Marina Kolesnik, founder and CEO, Oktogo.ru (leading Russian hotel booking and travel site)

2. Natalya Kaspersky, founder and CEO, InfoWatch (internet security software); co-founder, Kaspersky Lab

3. Alisa Chumachenko, founder and CEO, Game Insight (social and mobile games)

4. Diana Moldavsky, Chief Revenue Officer, Zeptolab (Cut the Rope mobile game); formerly, Russia Manager, OLX

5. Tatyana Bakalchuk, founder, Wildberries.ru (largest Russian online store for designer clothing and shoes)

6. Maria Chernitskaya, founder and CEO, iConText (leading Russian contextual advertising agency)

7. Anna Znamenskaya, founder, Workingmama; formerly, CEO, Digital Access (ivi.ru)

8. Taisiya Kudashkina, founder and CEO, Tulp.ru (local reviews’ site)

9. Elena Masolova, founder and CEO, Pixonic (social games publisher); co-founder, Darberry (Groupon Russia)

10. Anastasia Sartan, founder and CEO, Trends Brands (online retailer of designer clothing)

See a list of top 10 web startups from Russia.

The local reviews’ site Yelp has raised $107 million at ca. $900 million market capitalization at IPO on NYSE. The market cap increased to over $1 billion at IPO day. Launched in 2004, Yelp made revenues of $83 million from, mostly, selling ads to local businesses in 2011. Yelp has 66 million monthly unique visitors.

Launched in 2010, Tulp.ru has evolved into a kind of social network with local reviews in Russian regional cities. Tulp also has local reviews in Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Founded by Taisia Kudashkina, Tulp is operated out of the Russian cities of St. Petersburg and Omsk.

See a list of top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

The Japanese venture capital firm, UMJ Russia Fund has led a new funding round in Russian online dating service Teamo.ru. Including initial funding, Teamo.ru received more than $2 million, of which UMJ (Russia) likely invested $1 million. The new investment will be used for marketing purposes to increase brand awareness and number of users. UMJ Russia Fund was launched by United Managers Japan Inc. (UMJ) in June 2007.

Launched in late 2010, Teamo.ru has about 0.7 million registered user accounts. Its monthly audience is 0.3 million users. Teamo.ru, which positions itself as a site for serious relationships, uses a subcription business model. The project was initially funded by online business incubator, Fast Lane Ventures. German Otto Group-backed eVenture Capital also invested in Teamo.ru.

In June 2011, online dating service Flirtic raised $1 million from Almaz Capital Russia Fund.

The leader in Russian online dating, Mamba generated revenues of $41 million last year.

See a list of top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

The Russian online population is now more than 55 million. The online ad spendings were $1.4 billion last year. Looks like it’s a good time for copycat business models to emerge. While Eventbrite and Amiando are busy concurring online event registration and ticket sales markets in Europe and the U.S., here in Russia their competitor called TimePad has emerged. It has announed a new funding from Afisha Rambler. Its Rambler-Fund put more than $100,000 in TimePad. Previously, the company received some cash grants and angel money. TimePad is expected to be integrated with cinema ticket sales service Rambler-Kassa.

Launched in 2009, TimePad was founded by Daria Ustyuzhanina, Artem Kiselev and Lyudmila Pavlova in business incubator of Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. TimePad has 5,000 clients among training companies and event organizers. Most of them use TimePad for free. However, TimePad does make money by charging 9% per ticket sold. It also offers service subscription plans. In comparison, Eventbrite, which recently passed 50 million tickets sold, charges 5.5% + $1 fee.

See top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

Yandex, via its Yandex.Factory (Яндекс.Фабрика) startup funding initiative, has invested in TimeBooker, online booking of different services, according to Yandex blog.

Yandex first met the founders of TimeBooker at WebReady startup event in St. Petersburg last December. Yandex decided to invest in TimeBooker because of its unique service cost calculation model and strong founding team. The investment should be in the range of between $50,000 and $100,000.

Known as GBooking in English, TimeBooker is expected to be launched in Russia by Haifa, Israel-based startup XLR Group. It offers a web platform for online search, comparison and booking for services. TimeBooker is founded by Technion graduates Alexander Naslednikov (CEO), Ronen Kagan, Liran Gavish (CTO) as well as by Alexander Bryzgalov from Moscow.

See top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

The consortium of private equity firms Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure Fund (MRIF), ADM Capital, UFG Private Equity Fund II and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) has invested $100 million in Russian Towers, an independent operator and developer of telecommunications tower infrastructure in Russia. MRIF was lead investor in the round with $50 million. ADM Capital (via ADM CEECAT Recovery Fund) contributed $20 million.

Founded in 2009, Russian Towers constructs, acquires and operates telecommunications towers serving mobile communications companies and other radio-based operators. In 2010, Russian Towers raised funding from UFG, EBRD and founders of the company. Russian Towers help mobile telecom operators lower capital expenditures and expand their network. Russia Towers has more than 300 towers where it leases space to operators. It plans to have 1,000 towers in the next three to four years

Macquarie Renaissance Infrastructure Fund is a $630 million private equity fund jointly managed by Macquarie and Renaissance. It is the first major private fund dedicated to investing directly in infrastructure in Russia and other key CIS markets. MRIF previously invested in Brunswick Rail and GSR Energy.

Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA), part of Macquarie Group, has invested in broadcast towers operators in the UK (Arqiva) and the Czech Republic (CRa).

Recovery-as-a-Service cloud-based solutions provider nScaled has raised $7 million Series A financing from Almaz Capital and Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, as well as from leading Silicon Valley angel investors. The investment will be used to expand its global network of data centers, for new software development and sales & marketing. nScaled (formerly, LegalCloud) raised seed funding from Band of Angels’ Acorn Fund and members of the Band of Angels in January 2010.

Founded in 2009, nScaled provides Recovery-as-a-Service (RaaS), or recovery-in-the-cloud, to mid-size companies worldwide including Disaster Recovery, Backup and Archiving. nScaled is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in London. Being a pioneer in Recovery-as-a-Service three years ago, nScaled tripled its business in 2011 by a number of customers, new bookings, recurring revenues, number of servers protected, and terabytes of storage under management.

Peter Loukianoff, co-founder and managing partner of Almaz Capital, joined Board of Directors at nScaled.

nScaled recently announced the availability of free accounts designed to provide prospective customers with a fast and easy way to discover cloud-based disaster recovery, backup and archiving capabilities for their VMware data centers.

Almaz Capital recently invested in Vyatta, software-based networking for enterprise and service provider virtual and cloud environments.

The Russian online advertising market has been valued at well over $1 billion per year. The online ad spendings exceeded both print and outdoor ad spendings. Now, it’s time to rank Russian internet companies. One has been done by Forbes in Russia that has released a list of top 30 Russian internet companies. The online site Forbes.ru ranked the Russian internet companies by their revenues in 2011. Here are the top ten.

1. Yandex ($690 million) – search engine and search & contextual advertising

2. Mail.ru ($515 million) – display and contextual advertising, online games and social services

3. Utkonos ($300 million) – grocery sales

4. AnywayAnyday ($189 million) – airline ticket booking and sales

5. OZON.ru ($184 million) – online shopping mall

6. Holodilnik.ru ($166 million) – online shopping of white goods

7. KupiVIP.ru ($160 milion) – online shopping club and e-commerce platform for Russian retailers

8. Vkontakte ($152 million) – social network services

9. RBC ($150 million) – display advertising and social services

10. Biglion ($140 million) – daily deal services

The other top Russian internet companies include Wildberries ($129m), Afisha Rambler ($110m), Wikimart ($90m), Utinet.ru ($80m), Vigoda.ru ($54m), Boutique.ru ($42m), Mamba ($41 million), Game Insight ($40m), KupiKupon ($40m), WebMediaGroup ($40m), IT Business: Bolero.ru and 003.ru ($40m), Innova Systems ($36m), SUP Media ($36 million), Alawar ($30 million), Sapato.ru ($26 million), Zeptolab (Cut the Rope) ($24m), OneTwoTrip ($22m), InTouch Insurance ($20m), irr.ru ($20m), and Avito.ru ($10m).

See a list of top 10 Web Startups from Russia.

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The Russian-developed iOS app GoodReader, one of the best mobile PDF readers, has made headlines this week when the U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command has first planned to order several thousand iPad tablet computers with GoodReader app for use by flight crews and then reportedly canceled its plans due to security concerns.

GoodReader, which helps read and annotate PDF, TXT, MS Office (.doc, .xls, .ppt) and other files on iOS devices, was developed by Moscow-based Russian Yuri Selukov of Good.iWare. In addition, GoodReader can read files that are protected by encryption.

Yuri Selukoff, who is not professional software developer, first released GoodReader for iPhone back in 2009. Then he added GoodReader for iPad. Both productivity apps currently retail for $4.99 at iTunes App Store, while iPad app is reportedly much more popular than iPhone one.

It’s noticeable that GoodReader still stands out in spite of Adobe‘s release of free iOS app Adobe Reader last fall. However, the real test for GoodReader shall come when Microsoft will release MS Office for iPad.