The first month of summer has been quite busy for entrepreneurs and other tech industry players in Eastern Europe: we’ve tracked a hundred-odd news and feature stories coming from the region and selected the most significant ones. Here they are, compiled in a handy round-up to allow you to stay up to date with what’s going on in the region.
If you think something is missing, or would like to draw our attention to an important story, feel free to ping the author on Twitter (@shlema) or by e-mail at [email protected].
Startups, funds, accelerators
- Bulgarian startup Dronamics has won the Pioneers Festival Challenge 2015
- Ukrainian startup Kwambio has entered TechStars accelerator program in Boston and raised $650,000 in funding
- Another Ukrainian startup, GVMachines, also made it to the TechStars summer batch
- Russian startup Graviton has won Startup Village 2015 Pitch Competition and received some $100,000 in prize money
- Estonian startup Fleep has added unlimited history for free accounts and increased storage limit to 5 GB
- Czech startup Brand Embassy, showing 300 percent yearly growth rate, has launched a new tool for customer care
- UK logo startup Withoomph has launched in Russia following requests “from tens of thousands of local entrepreneurs”
- Poland-born Brainly Group has received the Best Education Startup award at The Europas conference
- Latvian NoSQL database vendor Clusterpoint has signed a partnership agreement with Telia Latvija to provide Database-as-a-Service
- Romanian smartwatch Vector with 30-day battery life will arrive in September
- Top Russian startups from Skolkovo will showcase their projects in Singapore tech show
- Ukrainian startup accelerator Happy Farm has launched an acceleration program in Kazakhstan
- In 2015, Ukrainian business angels from UAngel community have closed 21 deals, investing a total of $1.6 million in local startups
Crowdfunding
- Croatian startup Baggizmo has hit its goal in a $35,000 Kickstarter campaign for its “only everyday carry bag you will ever need”
- Prague-based designer Anna Maresova has launched a crowdfunding campaign for a highly advanced pleasure device called Whoop.De.Doo
- Slovak startup CulCharge has hit its initial goal of $60,000 in an Indiegogo campaign for “the smallest wearable 3-in-1 power bank”
- Ukrainian-Polish startup Ecois.me has hit its goal on IGG to fund an intelligent energy monitoring system
- Ukrainian smartphone flash iblazr² got funded on Kickstarter in just three days
Funding deals and M&A
- Ukrainian smart home-security startup Ajax Systems has raised $1 million from local fund SMRK
- Russian cloud video streaming startup Ivideon has raised $4 million in funding from Impulse VC
- Latvian chemical compound marketplace MolPort has raised €500,000 from FlyCap and Imprimatur Capital
- Latvian “Spotify for books” startup Fabula has raised €470,000 at €2-million valuation
- Russian geolocation startup Meanwhile has raised $100,000 from individual investors
- Croatian startup uniGluko has received €90,000 in funding from hub:raum
- Filmaster, a movie recommendation engine built by a team in Warsaw, Poland, has been acquired by Samba TV for a little over €1 million
- Lithuanian PlateCulture, which operates in Southeast Asia, has received €200,000 in funding from Practica Capital
- Russian fintech startup IQcard has claimed $18 million ruble monthly turnover and received new capital injection
- Russian VC fund DST Global has led a $500 million financing round in mobile shopping app Wish
- Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has invested $2.5 million in total in two Israeli startups, Safer Place and Mobilibuy
- Russian investor Yuri Milner has participated in HackerOne’s $25 million funding round
- Guard Systems has acquired Hungarian fleet management company MyFleet for an undisclosed amount
- Luxury fashion site Aizel.ru to receive up to €25 million from Russian investors
Laws and governments
- CzechInvest and Invest Macedonia have been rewarded as the top national agencies in Eastern Europe
- A major cybercriminal group has been taken down in Ukraine by a team of investigators and judicial authorities from six different European countries
- Ukrainian government has publicly called PayPal to make service fully available in the country
- Russian antitrust authorities held a scheduled session on the Google case on June 1, which resulted in adding an accusation of abusing its dominant position on the Russian market. The next session will be held in July
- Switzerland has allocated some $4.6 million to help establish e-government in Ukraine
- U.S. authorities have allowed Apple and Google, as well as other companies, to continue services to Crimea without violating the sanctions
- Russian communications oversight authority has put Facebook, Twitter and Google on notice
- Samsung has allegedly agreed to comply with Russia’s data-localization law
- Russia has copied EU commissars with own right to be forgotten law
- MI6 has pulled spies out of ‘hostile countries’ after Russia and China cracked encrypted files leaked by fugitive whistleblower Edward Snowden
- Russia and Iraq will develop cooperation in the fields of IT and telecommunications
- Wayback Machine’s 485 billion web pages have been blocked by Russian government order
- Russian officials consider switching to YotaPhone 2 smartphones running Sailfish instead of Android
- Booking.com has confirmed commitment to “important Russian market,” getting prepared to comply with personal data storage law
In other news
- Polish police have shut down an online piracy network and published a video of what they found
- Kyiv has become the fifth city in the world to let MasterCard holders pay for subway rides with cards that have chips using PayPass technology
- Russian internet giant Yandex has launched a new music streaming service, Yandex.Radio – a jukebox for users in the country who want to listen to pre-programmed music stations
- Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has opened a Russian company and teamed up with Skolkovo
- Russia’s Yota Devices has announced its first $640 tablet that sports two screens and is able to charge a YotaPhone smartphone
- Russia-based uCoz has launched uKit, a website creation platform “designed with even the least tech-savvy user in mind”
- Panasonic has opened its R&D center in Skolkovo, the international tech hub under completion on the outskirts of Moscow
- Yandex has protested against Russian ‘Right to be forgotten’ Internet bill and said it violates constitutional freedoms
- Hackers have breached Polish airline LOT’s systems, grounding 1,400 passengers
- Russian online retailer Ozon will begin hosting merchants from China and Europe this year to tap booming cross-border trade
- China’s largest online retailer JD.com has launched Russian site as first step to global expansion
- Russia’s e-commerce giant Ulmart has confirmed IPO plans in 2016, considers private equity deal in late 2015
- According to Yandex, bank cards dominate payments in most Russian websites while PayPal lags far behind
- Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation is to expand its tech city with €200 million BioCity to be build by Finland’s Turku Science Park Oy
Good (long) reads from around the Web
- Google Campus Warsaw is Coming – What Can We Expect?
- Poland leading the way in consumer banking Fintech innovation
- Supply of business accelerators drying up in Ukraine
- My life under Estonia’s digital government
- Photo essay from DigitalK 2015 in Sofia, Bulgaria
- Emi Gal: Romania must overcome risk aversion to become a tech hub
- Pavel Durov: The most interesting man in the encryption wars
- The Techsylvanian Hackaton — A look back
- Tips and tricks on fundraising in CEE Region
- Interview with Start Up Chile participant PublishSoSimply from Poland
- Startup Spotlight: Estonia’s Plumbr wants to help your Java applications run better
- Skolkovo initiative could give new boost to Russian startups
- 10 Startups You (Most Likely) Didn’t Know Were Polish
- Russian Groups Crowdfund the War in Ukraine
- Snapshots from Cluj-Napoca, the burgeoning Romanian startup hub you probably didn’t know about
- Eurosender: How three Slovenians grew their startup to a €3.6 million valuation
- Poland and the Business of the Internet of Things
- EIT Digital takes German and Polish startups to InfoShare
- InfoShare 2015 – the recap
- Several advantages give Ukrainian IT workers an edge over their global competitors
- Profile: Viktor Mikulasek, CEO at Slovak innovation studio Launcher
- Amid crisis, key Russian e-commerce players claim continued growth
- Five entrepreneurial places in Europe where hub things are happening (feat. Hungary, Lithuania and Estonia)
- Startup Spotlight: Romania’s iMedicare wants to help pharmacies better help their patients
- Dealflow from Latvia: These #LVstartups are raising over €5 million seed money
- Bitspiration Festival 2015 – Full of Advice and Awards
- The Eleven interview – What is Sofia’s secret?
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.