Catch up with tech news from Eastern Europe: November

Central and Eastern European-based entrepreneurs, VCs and bigger companies generated a healthy number of news stories in November, rushing to do as much as possible before the holidays begin.

Check out our round-up of the most important tech news headlines from Central and Eastern Europe.

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, VCs, accelerators

• How to Web Startup Spotlight brings together 32 tech startups
• Google Campus Warsaw and Innovation Nest have announced their first joint program with a tailor-made Startup Accelerator: Growth!
• Poland-based Kontakt.io calls on developers to unite and join the biggest beacon hackathon in history
• Ukrainian startup Pi Pillow has won the Audience Award at the Falling Walls Lab 2015 contest in Berlin 
• Polish startup community will beat for charity
• €40 million in funding ready for Balkan startups
• Pioneers Festival goes invitation-only, will hand-pick 500 promising tech startups for free access
• Russian startup that developed a luminophore technology to evacuate people has received an  award at the Open Innovations international forum in Moscow
• Startup Chile woos Russian startups for development across Latin America
• Ukrainian-made smartphone flash iBlazr 2 has made its way to Apple Stores across Europe
• Lithuanian game building and publishing platform TutoTOONS has hit 50 million game downloads
• Startup Spotlight on the How To Web conference: 32 teams from 9 countries
• Ukrainian startup Petcube has made to Inc’s “15 Coolest Products of 2015”
• Another Ukrainian startup, Petiole, has appeared in CNBC’s “20 of the world’s hottest start-ups of 2015”
• Estonia’s DigiFlak has scooped up the top prize at EIT Digital’s Idea Challenge in Trento
• Ukrainian startup Ugears has raised more than $60,000 on Kickstarter in the first few days for its beautiful plywood mechanical models
• The Pioneers of the Balkans conference will take place in Zagreb on December 3rd and 4th
• Russian startup Halal Guide has attracted $800,000 in funding from Kama Flow
• The Internet of Booze: Russian robo-bartender serves up shooters
• Omnia secure Wi-Fi router from the Czech Republic might not be the sexiest tech but it’s smashing it on Indiegogo
• New Russia-based accelerator will invest up to $15 million in cyber security startups
• Russian VC Pavel Charkashyn has announced a new $30 million fund dubbed GVA Vestor.in that will invest outside Russia
• The Prague-based social gaming network Gamee has reached 2 million gameplays in October
• With $60 million in new venture capital Swedish investment company Vostok Emerging Finance goes hunting for startups in Russia and the Middle East
• Russian government-backed fund FRII has launched a Big Data investment program
• Ukrainian advertising agency network CMS Group has launched a venture fund of its own that will invest up to $1 million in marketing startups
  

Funding deals and M&A

• Estonian language learning startup Lingvist has scored $8 million in new funding from Rakuten, Jaan Tallinn and others
• Ukrainian-Polish startup Prof.Estate has raised a funding round from Forum Capital at a valuation of $5 million
• Estonian startup Pipedrive has raised €743,000 from Noah Advisors
• Russia’s car sharing startup YouDrive has attracted $1 million in funding from Panavto
• New Russian secure messenger Avirton has attracted $1 million from unnamed private investors
• Ukrainian startup Jeapie has been acquired by Canada-based Mobify
• Russian startup Today Delivery has raised $500,000 in funding from Qiwi and City-Mobil
• Ukrainian startup Tisk na Spletu has raised $1.2 million in funding to support its launch in the US
• Russian travel site OneTwoTrip has raised $4 million in funding from Vostok New Ventures
• Russian exoskeleton startup ExoAtlet has raised $244,000 in seed funding
• Russia-based Elementaree has raised $300,000 in funding from Bright Capital and Alexey Menn
• Chefmarket, the “HelloFresh of Russia,” has raised $5 million at a $25 million valuation
• Russian startup Gettable has attracted $1 million in funding from AddVenture
• Romanian-British wearable tech startup Vector Watch has raised $5 million more for its stylish smartwatches with 30-day battery life
• Yuri Milner’s VC fund DST Global has invested $5 million in India-based Craftsvilla and poured some more money into India’s Ola
• Russia’s Rostelecom has bought a 75% stake in a local Big Data company IQMen for $8 million
• Yuri Milner’s fund DST Global has participated in a $100 million Series D funding round in Deliveroo
• Russian businessman Sergey Gordeyev has invested $10 million in Hyperloop Transportation Technologies
• Russia’s online dating market consolidates: Mamba has acquired Teamo
• Belarusian Wargaming has participated in a $4 million funding round for Hitbox
• Czech security company AVG has acquired Israel-based photo app startup Flayvr for “several million dollars”
• Soros fund has invested in Danish-Ukrainian software engineering company Ciklum to help Ukraine “break from the past”
• Belarus-founded Epam Systems has acquired Alliance Global Services
• Chinese VC fund Shunwei Capital has invested $50 million in Russia’s ToBox

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Laws and governments

• Equity crowdfunding going fully digital in Estonia
• Internet no longer free in Russia, says US watchdog
• Russia has demanded from Twitter to store user data within the country
• Google gets another month to comply with Russian anti-monopoly ruling
• Russia’s Yandex has asked the European Commission to investigate Google’s practices in relation to its Android mobile operating system in the European Union
• Albanian government has cut taxes to zero for small businesses with an annual turnover less than around €36,400
• Russian MP’s proposal to block Telegram after Paris attacks has garnered little support
• Kaspersky Lab: Russian cyber crime’s top flight “stole $790 million”
• Ukraine’s Ministry of Education and Science has teamed up with Google to launch a platform for inventors
• FBI has reportedly tracked the ‘biggest hack ever’ back to a Russian email address
• The Czech Republic’s first convicted software pirate has been offered an unexpected way of escaping punishment: log 200,000 video views on YouTube and Facebook or be handed a huge fine
• Russian television has revealed another secret: The Soviet space cannon

Bigger companies

• Grupa Onet.pl has taken over Business Insider license in Poland
• Uber has launched in Minsk, Belarus
• Russian online video streaming platform Ivi.ru has launched in Ukraine
• ‘No, thanks,’ responds Yandex to government assignment to operate in Iran
• Airbnb has seen rapid growth in Russia as the country’s economic recession forces more Russians to look for ways to supplement their incomes
• Russian Orthodox church has announced a plan to set up its own Wi-Fi network
• Google will contest Russia’s antitrust ruling on Android
• JURECA supercomputer: Made in Russia
• Microsoft has launched an Internet of Things laboratory in Kyiv
• Yandex has launched Meteum, a “hyper-local weather forecasting” and “automated information agency”

Good (long) reads from around the Web

• From cancer-sniffing knives to Prezi: Why Hungary’s startup scene is kicking up a gear
• From import substitution to autarky to military confrontation? Russia’s high tech strategy in questions
• Investors feel the impact of Hungary’s brain drain
• Something is accelerating in Budapest
• The rising of creativity in Albania
• Baltic startup scene in numbers
• From bank cards to e-wallets: How new legislation is changing the Russian e-payment scene
• “Budapest is a great place to live and visit,” says Alexander Bibighaus, Director of Engineering at Cloudera
• Outsourcing in Ukraine: Hit or Miss?
• The Slovak tech scene is gaining momentum
• Meet two robots-for-delivery startups based in CEE: Starship from Estonia and Sidewalk from Lithuania
• Report: Mobile banking, online trading and POS terminals in Russia are increasingly exposed to cybercrime
• Ukrainian researchers, entrepreneurs break the walls in Berlin
• ​Ukrainian startups come to the Web Summit Dublin
• The Top 19 Russian Mobile Ad Networks for User Acquisition
• Ultimate Race To Become The Leading CEE Startup Ecosystem
• How disruptive fintech and healthtech companies find industry and technology expertise in Ukraine
• Radius Group Managing Director Chris Van Riet: How e-commerce is reshaping Russia’s warehouse industry
• Welcome to Chyorny Yar, the village that nearly banned Wikipedia for 140 million Russians
• Skilled devs, low costs: No surprise this Romanian city has a booming startup scene
• Funds find a way to wild, wild east Europe