Tech news in Central and Eastern Europe: What happened in September

The first month after the summer hibernation has brought quite a number of news stories from across Central and Eastern Europe, from M&A and funding announcements to new exciting startups and governmental initiatives.

Here’s a handy round-up of all things tech business in CEE in September to bring you up to speed.

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

• Russian fund Maxfield Capital has made its first exit from US-based SponsorHub, in which it invested $800,000 in 2013
• Prague-based accelerator StartupYard has opened applications for its winter batch
• Czech Starcube will accelerate nine teams from five countries
• Poland-based Estimote scales beacon technology to track any person or object that moves
• Tripomatic, a global trip-planning tool crafted in the Czech Republic, has released the 3rd version with major updates
• SmartCAT, a spin-off company with $6 million in seed funding from Russia’s ABBYY LS, has launched its freelance translation marketplace with integrated CAT tools
• Russian-founded Readymag has introduced new Teamwork collaboration feature
• Estonian Taxify has opened ridesharing model in Riga
• Teams from Bulgaria and Estonia won the pitch competition at the Pirate Summit 2015
• Czech startup Avocode has allegedly turned down an offer from Apple and is gearing up towards raising $1 million from Credo Ventures
• Poland-based Kontakt.io has released a Secure Shuffling feature to avoid its beacons being hacked
• Slovenian Scoutee has launched a $50,000 Kickstarter campaign for its smart radar that can measure the speed of baseball pitch and transfer the data to smartphone via Bluetooth
• Quantum Lab Poland has received Horizon 2020 prize
• Moscow-based “acceleration space” API Moscow has shut down
• Uber for bikes on the rise in Lithuania
• Polish startup Zortrax has created a 3D-printed medical device to operate on veins and added a 3D model library to its Z-Suite software suite, a closed place where Zortrax users can store and share their models
• Czech Republic-founded startup Angee is on track to raise $250,000 on Kickstarter for its home security system
• Call for applications: Eleven accelerator in Bulgaria and StartupAwards.SK in Slovakia
• 20 Russian startups to compete in global seed-stage contest in Moscow
• Ukrainian-Kazakh startup Robo Wunderkind has launched a $70,000 Kickstarter campaign to develop “Lego of the future”
• Polish startup International Coupons SA has been valued at about €4.7 million
• hub:raum Krakow WARP accelerator has returned to help Central and Eastern European Startups
• Slovenia-based Smart Froc has launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise $55,000 for its smart “world’s first smart high chair”
• Hungarian-American entrepreneur Marton Anka has introduced its app Caret, an address book that tells people if you’re available to chat
• Russian millionaire Ziyavudin Magomedov has launched the Caspian VC Partners fund worth $300 million and invested in Uber and Hyperloop among others
• 500 Startups has hired partners in Israel, Germany, Eastern Europe and Turkey
• Ukrainian soldier has won gold at Europe’s drone modelling championship

Funding deals and M&A

• Snapchat has acquired Ukrainian image processing startup Looksery for alleged $150 million
• Russia’s InVenture Partners has led a $2.5 million funding round in Ometria
• Russia’s Runa Capital has led a $3 million funding round for Revegy
• Founders from Ukraine and Serbia have raised $200,000 in Israel for an iOS playlist management application called Echo
• Croatian startup Tourism4me has joined French accelerator 33entrepreneurs with €15,000 in funding
• Estonia’s Jobbatical has raised €510,000 for reshaping the future of work
• Polish startup Kekemeke has raised about €350,000 in funding
• Ukrainian Uber-like startup WinTaxi has raised funding from local angel investor Evgeniya Dubinskaya
• Latvian edtech startup Edurio has raised €230,000 from Imprimatur and Australian angel
• Russian startups REVO and Sorsdata have raised a total of $2.5 million from Vostok Emerging Finance
• GetIntent has secured $1 million from Russia’s Buran VC and Thomas Falk
• Hungarian startup Statzup has raised a €600,000 funding round
• Ukrainian-Dutch startup GitLab has raised a $4 million Series A funding round from Khosla Ventures
• Russian startup Mix Upload has raised some €20,000 from Moscow Seed Fund and Altair Capital
• Ukrainian entrepreneur Stas Matviyenko has raised $1.5 million for his Allset app, which allows to pre-order you meal and book a table for lunch in advance
• Slovakia’s Photoneo has raised €2.1 million in seed funding in a round led by Prague-based VC firm Credo Ventures
• Russia-founded Flint Capital has invested $5 million in video advertising startup Virool that also has Russian roots
• Ukrainian coworking space Platforma’s CEO plans to invest $1 million in local startups at the seed stage
• Ukraine’s Chernovetskyi Investment Group has invested $1 million in bus ticket startup Busfor (a.k.a. Gillbus)
• Russian VC fund Maxfield Capital has led a funding round for US-based fintech startup Pave
• Ukrainian investment firm Digital Future has invested $200,000 in local gamedev studio Missin Games

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Laws and governments

• Can building startups be taught? Latvia about to find out
• Russia to develop augmented reality technology for the military
• Minecraft will be used for urban planning in Prishtina, Kosovo
• The Russian government hired people to hack the Tor browser, but they failed
• A group of Moscow taxi drivers had gathered together for a protest against Uber
• Saakashvili for prime minister, weapons for citizens – and no tax for IT companies, demand Ukrainian online petitioners
• Edward Snowden has criticized Russia for its crackdown on Internet freedom and gay rights
• Russia’s data localization requirements have been delayed for Facebook, Google and Twitter
• Roskomnadzor has blocked first site for non compliance with personal data storage law, as Apple relocated data to Moscow data center
• Skolkovo has opened branch in Russia’s Far East, in Vladivostok
• Seven years of malware linked to Russian state-backed cyberespionage
• Russia has sided with Yandex, told Google to unbundle search from Android
• Russian hacker behind massive data breach has pled guilty
• Hackers have made a “very powerful” attack on the Kremlin website, according to the Russian government
• Russian police investigate Apple for ‘propagating homosexuality’

Bigger companies

• Russia’s most popular social network VK known by hosting lots of user-uploaded music and video has partly won and partly lost a $760,000 court case against Warner and Universal
• Slovak taxi drivers have gathered in Bratislava to protest against Uber
• Socialbakers has named ex-Criteo’s Robert Lang its new CEO, with the founder Jan Rezab becoming executive chairman
• Hungarian presentation platform Prezi has announced a collaboration with Logitech and added two new executives to the team as the company hits 60 million users globally
• CCC has acquired Poland’s largest online shoe shop Eobuwie.pl for some €30 million
• Yandex has launched a new SEM offer with enhanced auction model and ad relevance ranking
• China has won online sales in Russia
• Asseco Poland, Eastern Europe’s largest software maker, has agreed to buy 61.4 percent of Portugal-based rival Exictos for €21.5 million
• 500 Russian and Korean tech players have met in Seoul to develop business ties
• Smartwatches move into the Russian payments market
• Apple has changed its mind and allowed Russian software developers to receive payments to accounts in Sberbank
• Russia’s Yota mobile plans to deliver SIM cards to its Moscow clients by drone
• Yota Devices has entered into an agreement with ZTE that will see the Chinese company manufacturing the next generation YotaPhone 3
• Three new Chinese platforms have launched in Russia in two weeks time
• Czech security company AVG has released one-page privacy policy and challenged the industry to follow
• Wireless carrier Vimpelcom has announced thousands of job cuts in Russia
• Russia’s Sberbank and Uber have agreed on financial technology partnership
• Yandex has opened a commercial office in Shanghai
• Russian online classifieds service Prodai.ru has secured $500,000 from an unnamed wood industry businessman
• Pro-privacy secure messaging app Telegram is seeing 12 billion messages sent daily — up from two billion back in May, and one billion in February
• Czech-based security firm AVG has changed its privacy policy to be able to sell anonymised search and browser history data to advertisers in order to “make money” from its free antivirus software
• Russia’s Buran VC has poured some $3.5 million in video streaming service Ivi.ru
• Russian payment firm Qiwi has announced plans to introduce the country’s first virtual currency, the bitruble

Interviews

• Interview with Jane Zavalishina, head of Yandex Data Factory
• Interview with Luka Luka Sučić, New Business Manager from hub:raum Krakow
• Meet Éva Réz, a Hungarian VC finding and supporting the next unicorns in CEE
• Interview with Alexander Diatlov, co-founder of Ukrainian-Polish startup Ecoisme that helps you save on energy bills
• Meet Poland’s most influential woman in tech
• Discussing crowdsourcing and the Summit in Gjakova (Kosovo) with Epi Ludvik Nekaj

Good (long) reads from around the Web

• 10 Polish start-ups that made it on Kickstarter
• Polish start-ups – they’re in fashion!
• Polish VCs Striving to Catch Up to U.S. Venture Funding
• Tech startup offices are the new hiring tools, says Prague-based Officelovin’
• Report: Open Data Fest in Vilnius
• Russia’s personal data storage law comes into force as some key players still not ready to comply
• Defying country’s woes, Ukrainian startups advance new innovations and accelerate into the market
• Polish Startups – In Space!
• This is how Russian Internet censorship works: A journey into the belly of the beast that is the Kremlin’s media watchdog
• Google’s “New” Search Icon Was Created in 2008 by Russian Designer
• Interview with Albanfootball founder Alban Selamaj
• Russian data law fuels web surveillance fears
• Dokutech — Connecting the Dots
• Dealflow, startup traction and news from Latvia: August
• Meet the man in Czech Republic searching for an A.I. that will solve everything
• Russia’s Wikipedia Ban Buckles Under HTTPS Encryption
• Russia’s Kaspersky threatened to ‘rub out’ rival, email shows
• 4 Years of Innovation: An Interview With Skoltech President Edward Crawley
• 10 Innovations by Polish Students Worth Following
• MacPaw and the Ukrainian app revolution
• Ukraine’s failed tech revolution
• Bureaucracy killed Innovation in Albania
• Software and IT service export reached $6 billion in 2014
• Deskdoo – browser-based operating system from Poland
• Norway lends its support to Ukraine’s entrepreneurial spirit
• Sightseeing reengineered: budapestflow.com
• The future of IT education: With falling student numbers, can Estonia persuade young people to study tech?
• Why Business Is Booming In The Baltics
• Russia’s venture summer in review: More than 25 deals reported, new fund of up to $300 million launched in Moscow
• Start-up life in Poland outside of Warsaw and Cracow
• Russia’s Online Security Second-Worst in World – Report
• Get to know the Startup Poland Foundation
• Ukrainian online tutor platform graduates from Berlin business accelerator with $120,000
• Russia’s tech professionals are increasingly leaving the country
• Don’t be afraid of killer robots, says Yuri Milner
• How a Ukrainian tech company Binary Studio moved to the western part of the country to escape war