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.

UnitLine provides WiMAX services to corporate customers in ten regions of Russia. Its annual revenues are estimated at about $3 million.

Founded in 2004, Trivon raised funding from Virgin Group of Richard Branson in 2008. The company offers wireless broadband internet access services to residential and SME customers in 36 regions of Russia. The Russian wireless broadband market was valued at $200 million in 2008.

ERP and mutimedia software vendor 1C Company, which is controlled by founder and CEO Boris Nuraliev, generated revenues of $450 million and income of $55 million in 2008.

BVCP raised Baring Vostok Private Equity Fund IV with total committed capital of $1.05 billion in February 2007. This was the largest private equity fund in Central and Eastern Europe at the time. The funds under management of BVCP paid cumulative dividends of $1,232 million in 1998 – 2007.

BVCP says that 27% of capital invested by Baring Vostok funds has been into telecommunication, media and technology sectors. BVCP is a major investor in search engine Yandex, online store Ozon.ru, IT services provider for financial institutions CFT, financial risk management software vendor Riskdata, WiMax telecom operator Enforta, wireless broadband equipment vendor Infinet Wireless, and the others.

Launched in April 2008, UAProm has 20 thousand daily users on its e-commerce sites in Ukraine (UAProm.net), Russia (RUProm.net), Belarus (BELProm.net) and Kazakhstan (KAZProm.net). UAProm has 40,000 registered companies on its database. More than 100 companies are paying customers.

MIH Allegro Group, which is owned by media group Naspers of South Africa, operates the leading e-commerce trading platforms and classifieds sites in Eastern Europe under the Allegro, Aukro and other brands. Naspers owns 43 percent of the leading Russian online portal, Mail.ru.

The Forum, which is organized by Incisive Media, will feature keynotes from top executives at Thomson Reuters, Telegraph Media Group, The Economist Group, Reed Business, etc. Quintura is one of the platinum sponsors of the Forum together with search engine Exalead and Mondeca.

The presentation will focus on using Quintura Site Search by online publishers to drive engagement with site visitors in order to increase content consumption and Click-Through-Rate.

To sign up as a delegate of the Forum at a discount rate, please quote the Quintura name at the time of booking and receive 10% off the full package rate. Please contact Joanna Letts either by email (joanna.letts@incisivemedia.com) or call her at +44 (0) 207 316 9361.

1C Company, whose revenues were estimated at over $350 million in 2007, should have been valued at more than $1 billion before the economic recession. Founded in 1991, 1C Company develops and sells integrated Enterprise Application Suite (EAS) package software products. In 1996, 1C Company expanded its business into the game sector and quickly became the leading publisher and distributor of computer and video games in Russia and Eastern Europe. In 2008, 1C Company acquired computer game publisher BUKA.

Headquartered in Moscow, 1C Company has over 700 employees and 10,000 value-added resellers and distributors in 600 cities across Russia and CIS countries. The company is majority owned by its founder Boris Nuraliev.

• New Mini-Cloud Settings – settings for search results display,
• Banners – an interface to enable embedding images within search clouds.

New Mini-Cloud Settings

Display search results under the Quintura search widget. If this parameter is disabled, the widget will have no search results displayed and users will go directly to the full-size Quintura search cloud on a separate site page by clicking a word in the widget’s search cloud.

If a mini-cloud has search results displayed, the other parameters shall be set to open the full-size search cloud by Clicking a word or Clicking a result. On the full-size search cloud the selected search result will have a detailed annotation.

Banners

In tests, the favicons and banners that are embedded in the Quintura search clouds attract user interest to site search and have a higher Click-Through-Rate (CTR). The Quintura affiliates that embed its site search now have the option to associate images (banners) with search terms.

This feature enables web publishers to accompany a search query with a favicon, which, when mouse-overed, will expand into a banner (see an example on http://affiliates.quintura.com/). The banners can also be displayed as the first result on a separate search engine results page. The favicons and banners are added in the Banners section of the administration page at affiliate publisher’s online account.

To try new features, embed Quintura Site Search for your site via http://affiliates.quintura.com

The value of the deal was not disclosed but the analysts estimate it at at ca. $3 million.

SMX Communications Ltd. (SMX Com) reported revenues of $6 million from mobile VAS in 2008.

Founded in 2004, SMX Com sells ring tones, icons, screen savers and games via a download from its web-site, SMXCom.ru as well as via partnerships with TV channels.

The Russian mobile VAS market was valued at $3.8 billion in 2008.

In late 2008, a St. Petersburg-based private equity firm, Quadriga Capital bought-out Euro-Address, the Russian publisher of “yellow pages” directories in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and the North West of Russia, from Interinfo. Founded in 1993, Euro-Address publishes telephone and business directories under the Allo, Address, Business Address and Pomor brands with a total print-run of over 500 thousand copies. Its 2008 revenue were estimated at $6 million. The company operates online portal at e-ADRES.ru.

The Russian “yellow pages” directories advertising market was estimated at $90 million in 2008, of which about 13 percent came from online advertising. The leading Russian “yellow pages” directories operator, Kontakt East Holding reported annual revenues of $20 million. The Russian yellow pages advertising market could drop 30 percent in 2009.

Quadriga Capital currently invests from its $136 million Quadriga Capital Russia Private Equity Fund II L.P., which fund raising was completed in March 2006. The portfolio companies of Quadriga Capital in media, IT and telecom sectors include a Moscow-based WiFi telecom operator Tascom, computer game publisher Akella, TV-home shopping channel TV Club, and voice recognition software and hardware vendor Speech Technology Center (STC).

When corporate web-sites of consumer good companies such as Solvay Pharma become media for their brands, Quintura helps Solvay to better interact with their site customers.

Solvay has selected to place its own images and banners next to popular search keywords and phrases in Quintura site search cloud. The images are hyperlinked to Solvay Pharma product mini-sites, allowing the company to better display product information and direct site search users to it.

The web master of Solvay Pharma site has a Quintura online account to control placing images into the Quintura cloud and access to up-to-date site search analytics.

Quintura provides hosted site search services to Solvay for a monthly subscription fee.

The implementation is the first one that has been made by Quintura for a corporate web-site. It shows a growing demand for Quintura site search, analytics & monetization solution from consumer good companies.