Adding ICQ to online instant messaging (IM) platforms and VoIP services already owned by Naspers will complement its global footprint and make Naspers one of the largest global communications companies with over 500 million users. Naspers will become as big as Skype that reported 521 million user accounts at the end of September 2009.  That is why Naspers shall be interested in acquiring ICQ that AOL is reportedly planning to sell for about $300 million. Founded in 1996, ICQ was acquired by AOL for $287 million in 1998.

ICQ has over 42 million active users wordwide and is available in 16 languages.

Naspers/MIH Group has over 450 million instant messaging users in its fully- and partially-owned portfolio companies around the world including:

- 410 million registered users of QQ (35%-owned by Naspers) in China in March 2009;

- 15 million registered users of Gadu-Gadu (acquired and 100%-owned by Naspers from 2007) in Poland, Romania, Bulgaria and the Ukraine;

- 10 million registered users of Agent@Mail.ru (43%-owned by Naspers) in Russia;

- 10 million registered users of mobile IM service MXit (30%-owned by Naspers) in South Africa and Indonesia;

- 10 million registered users of Netherlands-based mobile IM service Nimbuzz (38%-owned by Naspers); and

- several million users of mobile messaging services of ACL Wireless (30%-owned by Naspers) in India and South-East Asia.

Russian financial group Finam has invested an undisclosed amount to exercise its option and increase its stake from 10% to 20% in global social networking site Badoo. In January 2008, Finam said it would make a $30 million investment in the site.

Founded in 2006, Badoo has over 48 million users worldwide. The users come mostly from Western Europe and Latin America. Badoo reached operating profitability in Q3 2009. The site generates most of its revenues from micro-payments for premium services, reported Vedomosti. Badoo was launched in London by Russian software developer Alexey Andreev, founder of most popular Russian online dating platform Mamba, the newspaper said. In 2005, Finam acquired a 68.5% majority stake in Mamba from the founder.

Finam made an investment in Badoo out of its fund Finam – Information Technologies.

Our visual search engine for children Quintura Kids has been named among the Top 5 Search Engines for Kids by Pandia Search Engine News. The list of top 5  search engines for kids includes Ask Kids, Boolify, Quintura Kids, StudySearch and KidRex.

Per and Susanne Koch, editors of Pandia, said about Quintura Kids:

“..If these are not what you were looking for, a search cloud hovers above: Your search term is highlighted in the middle of related terms. As you point your mouse to the terms in the cloud, Quintura modifies your query and the search results. Even though this might not be as intuitive as Boolify, it is easy to understand how Quintura Kids works.”

The Quintura search cloud helps to determine user intent and gives search directions. In addition to Quintura Kids, Quintura offers hosted site search service for online publishers, Quintura Site Search.

One of the deans of venture capital, Morgenthaler Ventures has led a $10 million Series B round for electronic note application service Evernote, the company announced. Previous investors Troika Dialog and DOCOMO Capital, which invested a total of $6.5 million in Series A, also participated in the round. The investment will be used to expand the service into more platforms and localize it into multiple languages.

Founded in 2006, Evernote has 2 million users. The service, which is available in English and Russian, works online and on mobile devices BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Palm Pre as well as on Windows and Mac computers.

Evernote utilizes a “freemium” business model. The basic service is free but offers a limited amount of online storage space. For a small monthly fee, users get more storage, increased security and can share notes.

Our visual search engine Quintura has been named among the Best Search Engines for ESL/EFL Learners - 2009 by Websites of the Day blog. The list of the best search engines for English language learners includes EyePlorer, Study Search, Carrot², Quintura, Boolify, Viewzi, Mel Zoo, and Middlespot.

Larry Ferlazzo, editor of Websites of the Day, said about Quintura:

“It provides search results in a visual “cloud.” I’d characterize it as similar to the present version of Kartoo, the well-known search engine, but much less confusing”

The Quintura search cloud helps to determine user intent and gives search directions. In addition to being a search destination, Quintura offers hosted site search service, Quintura Site Search and safe, visual-based search engine for children, Quintura for Kids.

Leading European provider of cinema information and e-commerce services AlloCine has acquired a stake in the most-visited Russian cinema information site and search engine, KinoPoisk.ru. The 40% stake was purchased from internet investor DST (Digital Sky Technologies), reported newspaper Kommersant. According to expert valuations, the deal could be worth ca. $2 million. KinoPoisk.ru founders Vitaly Tatsiy and Dmitri Sukhanov hold the remaining 60% stake in the company, the newspaper said.

Founded in 2003, KinoPoisk.ru has over 12 million monthly visitors. The name of the site is translated as “Cinema Search”. The site reported revenues of ca. $0.6 million and net loss of ca. $0.2 million in 2008.

Founded in 1993 in France, AlloCine is based in Paris and managed by Claude Escatine and Gregorie Lassalle. It has presence in the UK, Germany, Spain and Canada. In 2000, AlloCine was acquired by Canal+ (Vivendi Universal). In September 2003, the management and CITA Gestion bought-out the site from Vivendi. In May 2005, New York-based investment fund Tiger Global Management acquired a majority stake in AlloCine.

Russian media and entertainment group ProfMedia has launched a reverse accelerated bookbuild to purchase shares in leading Russian online portal and search engine company Rambler Media. The company is listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange. Following the completion of the bookbuild, ProfMedia may consider de-listing Rambler from AIM, the company said.

The Rambler’s share price increased 8% to $5.10 today. The Rambler’s market capitalization is about $80 million.

In December 2006, ProfMedia acquired a 54.5% majority stake in Rambler for ca. $250 million. Now it could purchase the remaining 45.5% stake for less than $40 million.

Update: As a result of the reverse accelerated bookbuild, ProfMedia has increased its stake in Rambler Media to 75.0% by purchasing more than 3 million shares in Rambler at a price of $6.00 per share for a total value of $18.9 million. In addition, ING Bank purchased a 13.03% stake in Rambler Media and entered into a total return swap transaction with ProfMedia. ING was acting as broker and adviser to ProfMedia for the purchase of Rambler’s shares.

Moscow and Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund, Almaz Capital Russia Fund I has made an investment in Acumatica, a web-based accounting, ERP and CRM software vendor, the company announced on its web-site. According to business newspaper Vedomosti, Almaz Capital invested several million dollars in exchange for about 20% stake in Acumatica.

Acumatica, which launched its brand and web-site in October 2008, is incorporated in the US and has software development operations in Russia. The Acumatica technology was initially developed as a project of virtualization and automation software vendor Parallels. Serguei Beloussov, venture partner at Almaz Capital and CEO of Parallels, owns a stake in Acumatica, he told to the newspaper.

Almaz Capital Russia Fund I was formed in July 2008, when it completed an initial closing with a $30 million anchor investment from Cisco.

Quintura Site Search has turned one year old when Google celebrated the third anniversary of its Custom Search Engine by releasing some new features last week.

Unlike Google, Quintura Site Search offers a search cloud (map) of related concepts and keywords from the site. The Quintura search cloud helps to determine user intent and gives search directions. Quintura also offers search analytics and related links widget. The site search can be monetized with either own search banner ads or search ads from contextual advertising providers.

Over 4,000 web publishers have registered to use Quintura Site Search since its launch.

Russian ecommerce group eHouse Holding, which sold 51% stake in Paintium, a company operating online dating and social networking site Damochka.ru and banner exchange network BannerBank for $3.3 million to Rambler Media in July 2006, has bought the online properties back from Rambler for about $0.2 million, reported CNews.

Founded in 2001, Damochka.ru had 1.7 million registered users and 0.7 million active members in July 2006. Due to management changes and own competing projects, Rambler never integrated the site into its product portfolio and decided to sell it back to the original owners.

According to eHouse CEO Vladislav Ulendeev, in the near future Damochka.ru, which has about 0.3 million monthly users, will be relaunched as online shopping club.

eHouse recently sold majority in its online shops Bolero.ru and 003.ru to X5 Retail Group

The Russian online game market is expected to reach $238 million in 2009, up 29% from $185 million in 2008, according to data released by iKS-Consulting (via Prime-TASS BIT). The Russian mobile game market is valued at $87 million in 2009.

MMOG will generate revenues of $210 million while casual games will generate $28 million. The game players mostly pay for MMOG with electronic money (43%) and via instant payment terminals (35%). Some 95% of casual game players pay via SMS.

The major Russian MMOG publisher and developer Astrum Online Entertainment, which is majority-owned by DST, is currently merging with online portal Mail.ru. The major casual game publisher and developer Alawar Entertainment raised several million dollar funding from Finam in 2007.

The alternative search engines held only 1.3 percent share of searches in Russia in August 2009, reported Vedomosti by citing data from comScore.  The Russian search market leader, Yandex held 54.5 percent share of searches, ahead of Google (34.5%), Mail.ru (7.4%), Rambler (1.9%) and Microsoft’s Bing (0.4%). According to comScore, there were 21.5 million search users in Russia last August, or 63.4% of Internet users in the country.

The fact that Yandex powers search on Mail.ru will imply that Yandex and Google hold more than 96% search market share in Russia. The new Russian search ranking shows a significant decline of Rambler’s search share from about 10% last year to 2% now.

Yandex was recently ranked as the 7th search property globally, ahead of MySpace, Daum and AOL.

Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies (RUSNANO) will set up a $1 billion international nanotechnology investment fund, according to its corporate web-site. The U.S.-based C Change Investments has won a tender to become a Western investment partner for RUSNANO’s first international fund, reported business newspaper Vedomosti.

RUSNANO and C Change are expected to put up to $500 million each into the new fund. It will be registered in the U.K. and formed in Q4 2009 – Q2 2011. The fund will be managed by Rusnano Capital. The fund will invest in nanotechnology ventures in Russia including Western technology transfer and development of Russian nanotechnology production.

Launched in November 2008, C Change Investments is based in Cambridge, MA and focuses on investment in and development of clean energy technologies. C Change was co-founded by John Preston, former director of technology development at MIT, and Russell Read, former chief investment officer of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

Our hosted site search service Quintura has been named a top 10 site search option by web design community DesignM.ag. The list also includes Bing Box, Eurekster Swicki, Google Custom Search, Lijit, Rollyo, SearchBlox, Sikbox, Sphere, and Yahoo! Search BOSS.

Steven Snell, editor of DesignM.ag, said about Quintura Site Search:

“The Quintura site search widget can easily be added to your site to offer a site search and to monetize your traffic. The widget uses a search cloud and you can display ads from your own inventory or sponsored ads”

Check the search widget in the left sidebar on this blog.

The Quintura search cloud helps to determine user intent and gives search directions. In addition to site search, analytics and monetization, the site publisher can use the Quintura related links widget to display site links related to a particular article/page on the web-site.

Russian billionaire Vladimir Potanin’s Interros and JP Morgan Chase’s One Equity Partners agreed to put $500 million each into a new $1 billion private equity fund. The fund will make expansion-stage investments in Russian companies in consumer retail, manufacturing and service sectors. JP Morgan will help the fund to secure debt financing. This is the first major Russia-focused private equity fund since the start of financial crisis in 2008.

Founded in 2001, One Equity Partners (OEP) manages funds of US$ 8 billion exclusively for J.P. Morgan. OEP focuses on opportunities for industrial consolidation. In Europe, OEP is a majority shareholder of Süd-Chemie AG and Austrian Constanta Packaging, core shareholder of MDAX-listed company Pfleiderer AG, and core shareholder of Carlson Wagonlit Travel and the Dutch Schoeller Arca Group.

The other major U.S. private equity firm TPG Capital recently made a Russian private equity investment when it acquired a stake in Lenta supermarket chain. DFJ, VTB Group and RUSNANO agreed to form a $100 million Russian venture capital fund DFJ-VTB Aurora Fund.

The venture capital fund Softline Venture Partners has agreed to invest $1 million in ebook online service Bookee. The investment will be disbursed over three years, Softline announced on its corporate web-site.

Bookee, which is expected to launch in early November 2009, will offer ebook search and download service. The users will have to first download the bookee interface software in order to read and buy the electronic books.

In June 2009, Russia’s largest online digital book store LitRes was acquired by book publisher Eksmo. The software supermarket Softkey recently launched ebook section on its web-site.

In July 2009, Softline Venture Partners invested in hypervideo technology developer Actio.

Russia’s largest retailer in terms of sales, X5 Retail Group will develop its online business using experience of well-known online retailers in Russia. X5 has acquired a 51% stake in IT Business, a joint venture with the owners of online stores Bolero.ru and 003.ru, for $1 million. In addition, X5 has an option to purchase the remaining 49% stake in IT Business within 5 years at a price based on business performance using an agreed formula.

eHouse Holding, the owners of Bolero.ru and 003.ru, contributed to the new joint company their rights to the online properties, as well as their key employees and essential business infrastructure including IT equipment, call-centre, software, databases and leasing rights to a distribution center. The online stores, which have 70,000 daily visitors, will continue operating under their existing brands.

Founded in 1999, Bolero.ru sells books and entertainment media. It’s the second most popular online retail store in Russia. Founded in 2000, 003.ru sells household appliances and electronics. It has one of the largest turnovers in the category.

X5 Retail Group was created in May 2006 as a result of merger between discounter chain Pyaterochka and supermarket chain Perekrestok. In June 2008, X5 acquired hypermarket chain Karusel.

As of September 30, 2009, X5 operated 1,217 stores in Moscow, St. Petersburg, other Russia cities and Ukraine as well as 586 stores under franchisee agreement across Russia. For the first half of 2009, X5 reported net sales of $3,978 million, EBITDA of $347 million and net profit of $48 million .

Leading European private equity firms UFG and GIMV have invested into a EUR 31.6 million leveraged buy-out (LBO) of French travel portal Easyvoyage. The transaction includes raising new capital and restructuring of existing capital.

Founded in 2000, Easyvoyage is the largest French travel site for information and price comparison with 6 million unique monthly visitors. The site provides its merchants with 2.5 million leads per month. Its 2009 turnover is estimated at EUR 450 million with revenues of EUR 19.3 and EBITDA of EUR 6.9 million. Easyvoyage is a top 5 travel site in Italy and Spain and will expand in Germany and the UK.

The leading Russian search engine Yandex has launched Yandex.kz in Kazakstan. The online portal offers major Yandex services such as search, news, mail, maps, and hosting customized for local web users.

With 46% share of searches in Kazakhstan through Yandex.ru and Search.Mail.ru, Yandex faces a fierce competition from Google that also has 46% search share in the country. Kazakhstan has 2.5 million internet users out of 15 million population.

The search on Yandex.kz takes into account the morphologies of both Kazakh and Russian languages. Yandex returns links to local web-sites first in return to “local” search queries. For example, the search query for “President” returns the link to the official web-site of the President of Kazakhstan as the first search result link on Yandex.kz. In comparison, the same search on Yandex.ru returns the link to the web-site of the President of Russian Federation on top of the list of search results.

Another example is that searching for “exchange rate” on Yandex.kz will return a rate for US dollar to Tenge, and not the rate for US Dollar to Russian Ruble. As an option, the user can select the language for web search interface to match the language of the search results.

Yandex will work with Kazakhstani advertisers through a local exclusive partner Kaznet Media. The local advertisers can buy Yandex.Direct ads in both Kazakh and Russian languages as well as pay for their online advertising campaigns in both Tenge and Rubles.

The leading Russian online video portal, RuTube has started monetizing its online video content with in-video contextual advertisements from Begun, the two companies said in a joint press announcement.

Founded in 2006, RuTube has over 6.5 million unique monthly visitors. The site is ranked as top 10 most visited web-site in Russia. The monthly video views on RuTube.ru exceed 65 million. In 2008, RuTube was acquired by Gazprom Media.

Begun powers in-video contextual ads on online video community Smotri.com, news site RIAN.ru, and TV channel Rossia’s web-site, RuTV.ru. The Russian online video ad market is valued at over $4 million per year.