Social game

Update: According to Ventech founder and general partner Alain Caffi, his firm Ventech invested $2.5 million in $5 million round in Pixonic.

In Russia, Ventech of France previously invested in Oktogo and women-centric online portal WomanJournal.ru.

Ventech is also an investor in Crocus Technology that recently agreed a multi-million dollar investment with RUSNANO.

Almaz Capital Russia Fund I

Mobile video software provider Qik was acquired by Skype for over $150 million in January 2011.

Russia’s leading search engine company Yandex went IPO at $8 billion valuation on NASDAQ on May 24. Almaz Capital acquired a stake in Yandex at $1 billion valuation in September 2009.

Almaz Capital Managing Partner Peter Loukianoff was recently on the Board of Directors of Qik and managed Almaz‘s investment in Yandex.

In addition to Qik and Yandex, Almaz Capital invested into ERP software provider Acumatica, casual game publisher Alawar Entertainment, mobile social network provider Apollo, virtuallization software vendor Parallels and online travel agency Travelmenu.

The race to become Zappos of Russia (or Zalando of Russia) gets underway. In July 2010, the French Direct Group of Pascal Clement and the German Otto Group-backed eVenture Capital funded the Russian online shoe store Sapato. In November 2010, Investment AB Kinnevik contributed $2 million of $5 million round in Sapato.

The other Russian online shoe store Lamoda.ru has raised funding from Tengelmann Group, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Investment AB Kinnevik. Launched in February 2011, Lamoda.ru is operated by Moscow-based KupiShoes. The store was initially funded by the German internet business incubator Rocket Internet (Samwer brothers) of CEO Florian Heinemann. Rocket Internet launched German’s largest online shoe retailer Zalando.de in 2008. Tengelmann Group and Holzbrinck also invested in Zalando.

The word “Kupi” (or “Buy” in Russian) is becoming a “must have” to launch a successful e-commerce venture in Russia. Remember, KupiVIP (leading Russian online shopping club) and KupiBonus (online coupon service).

Tengelmann Group is an international multi-segment retailer whose subsidiaries include OBI, KiK, Kaiser’s Tengelmann and Plus Online. The family business was founded in 1867 in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany and is now managed by the 5th successive generation. Tengelmann Group, which operates in 15 countries including OBI in Russia, has annual sales of EUR 11.3 billion.

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Click to download Quintura search apps for iOS, Android and Symbian.

Click to download Quintura search apps for iOS, Android and Symbian.

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Russia has become the second largest Internet market in Europe with over 40 million internet users. We at Quintura would like to introduce top 10 Russian internet startups of 2009.

The list includes startup internet companies from Russia, which launched new online services and raised venture capital funding in 2009. The below startups were involved in major Russian venture capital deals in 2009.

1. The leading Russian online shopping club, KupiVIP.ru has reached over 1 million registered users since launch in late 2008. Founded by CEO Oskar Hartmann, the Moscow-based company raised a new funding of over $10 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, ABRT Fund, Arlan and Direct Group in 2009.

2. The major independent women-centric online portal in Russia, WomanJournal.ru has recently re-launched the site. Founded by French Direct Group in late 2006, WomanJournal.ru agreed to merge with Passion.ru in November 2009 to create the online market leader for Russian women with over 5 million monthly users.

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.3. The electronic note application service, Evernote has reached 2 million users by launching versions for all major mobile and computer desktop platforms. Founded by Stepan Pachikov in 2006, Evernote raised a new funding of $12 million from Morgenthaler Ventures and DOCOMO Capital in 2009 to expedite growth by releasing local language versions and expanding software OS platforms.

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4. On-demand online movie service, VidiMAX is expected to launch in spring 2010. The company raised more than $4 million from Troika Venture Fund ahead of the launch.

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5. Founded in the middle of 2008, Russia’s first online shopping mall, WikiMart boasts high-profile business angel investors. The company, which raised several hundred thousand dollars from Western investors in May 2009, faces a challenge to grow regular traffic to the site above current 5 thousand daily visitors.

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.6. 3D web-enabled social gaming developer, CloudMatch renders the 3D world in a cloud and delivers 3D graphics to Web browsers using AJAX. Founded by Max Gannutin and Andrey Kazakov in 2009, Mountain View, CA and St. Petersburg, Russia-based CloudMatch offers 3D postcards Facebook application CloudCards and develops 3D chat/virtual room application CloudChat. The company is also involved in co-production of social games with game publishers. CloudMatch is looking for its first major venture capital funding..

7. Personal computer security software vendor, SafenSoft delivers new standards of protection against computer viruses, trojans, exploits and hackers. Founded in 2006 by CEO Mikhail Kalinichenko as spin-off of StarForce, SafenSoft raised $3.6 million from Troika Venture Fund in March 2009 and entered the U.S. market with SafenSec products in November 2009..

8. Virtual computing company iCore Software has launched beta version of iCore Virtual Accounts (VA), container-based virtualization for Windows desktop, for free download. iCore VA are isolated virtual machines that run on top of existing hardware and operating system. Founded in 2007 by Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology PhD students Artem Prokopenko and Nikita Parfenov, iCore Software raised seed funding from ABRT Fund.

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9. Create-your-own-avatar (“inf”) service “А-я-яй.ру” (iii.ru) was launched in March 2009 by online expert systems and virtual assistant service developer Nanosemantics. In June 2009, iii.ru reached 100,000 registered users. The avatar can be trained and embedded into your own site or blog. The company is funded by Natalya Kaspersky, CEO of InfoWatch and her husband Igor Ashmanov.

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10. WiFi-based geolocation service provider Wi2Geo (Wireless to Geographic) offers its online and mobile users a range of location-based services from its online partners. Launched in Moscow in July 2008, Wi2Geo has raised funding from Kite Ventures of Edward Shenderovich.

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Click to download Quintura search apps for iOS, Android and Symbian.

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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.

]]> http://blog.quintura.com/2009/11/19/acquisition-of-icq-to-make-naspers-as-big-as-skype/feed/ 0 http://blog.quintura.com/2009/09/04/google-seeks-to-move-to-meaning-based-search-quintura-does-it/ http://blog.quintura.com/2009/09/04/google-seeks-to-move-to-meaning-based-search-quintura-does-it/#comments Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:58:06 +0000 Quintura http://blog.quintura.com/?p=3137 Google CEO, Erick Schmidt has revealed in his recent interview to Techcrunch that Google needs to move from words to meaning, i.e. better understand search queries and return results based on meaning of the query.

“We have to get from the sort of casual use of asking, querying…to “what did you mean?””, he told to TechCrunch.

The search technology that powers Quintura visual-based search services such as Quintura Site Search and Quintura for Kids operates like a human brain. Quintura, whose index features a search cloud of related terms to easily refine searching, returns search results based on meaning and not keywords. Its search index is based on contextual relationships among search terms.

Quintura has been awarded five U.S. patents for its neural networking search technology and graphical search interface. –The patents validate neural networks for search, visualization and context management, contextual accuracy and relevance of search results, and use of neural networks for keyword generation.

That is why some major providers of online information has expressed serious interest in licensing the Quintura technology for meaning-based search and navigation.

See also Quintura’s Search Cloud vs. Google’s Wonder Wheel.

PCWorld.com

Here is an explanation why Rick turned to Quintura:

“Because I can’t monitor my kids’ computer activity every second of the day, I’m starting by replacing Google with Quintura. This kid-friendly search engine lets you type in a query and/or click your way through a word cloud and get G-rated results in return.”

Since 2007, the teachers and librarians of more than 1,000 elementary schools in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand have been using Quintura for Kids, a kids-friendly search engine developed and operated by Quintura.

Here are screen shots of search for “Apple + iPhone” on Quintura.com and Google.com.

To join the conversation, go to the Twitter search for “Quintura” or leave your comments here on this blog.

Will this be the end of the visual search engines or just the beginning?

• 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

We wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

ONEXIM Group, which is led by Mikhail Prokhorov, is one of Russia’s largest private investment funds with a focus on mining industry, innovative projects in energy and nanotechnology, real estate and other industries. ONEXIM has more than $25 billion in funds under management.

In Russia, the Forbes magazine is published by Axel Springer Russia. The magazine web-sites Russian Newsweek and ComputerBild that are published by Axel Springer use the visual-based site search from Quintura.

ONEXIM Group has recently financed the launch of the Snob magazine in Russia. Next, coming are the Snob TV and muti-media online portal on Snob.ru.

In September 2008, ONEXIM Group acquired 50% of Renaissance Capital, the leading investment bank in the Russian, CIS and African markets for $500 million. The bank advised the shareholders of Mail.ru on a sale of 30% stake to media and Internet group Naspers.

Rambler Media

Rambler Media, which owns 50.1% of Begun, agreed to sell the company to Google for $140 million last July.

Google had 5% share of $210 million Russian contextual ad spending in 2007. Begun had 20% and Yandex had 64% share of online ad spending, respectively, according to iConText. Technically, Google and Begun together will hold less than 30% market share. However, if Google had acquired Begun, there would have been only two major contextual advertising companies left in Russia – Yandex and Google. That would have been a duopoly.

According to Wikipedia, duopoly is “specific type of oligopoly where only two producers exist in one market. In reality, this definition is generally used where only two firms have dominant control over a market”. In fact, a duopoly usually leaves a limited room for competition and product innovation.

With three major contextual ad services on the Russian internet market, web publishers will have a much greater choice of selecting one that best suits their needs.

The news has been first picked up by paidContent.org