Tech news from Eastern Europe: October

Another month, another dose of tech news and feature stories from Central and Eastern Europe. We’ve carefully selected a hundred odd headlines to help you catch up with the things happening in this part of the world.

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 shlema@gmail.com.

Startups, VCs, accelerators

• Serbian-born Warrant.ly is a cloud solution to manage all your warranties
• Estonia-based startup Fleep has released a new version of its team messaging app
• 1776 Challenge Cup for startups will be held in Budapest on November 12 and in Kyiv on November 20
• Ukrainian-born white-label grocery delivery service CartFresh has been launched for customers in and around Boston, MA
• Russian 3D scanning startup Texel has won the Seedstars Moscow competition
• Group of blind entrepreneurs from Russia are launching a smartphone to help those who can’t see
• Riga-based Clusterpoint has announced its new product Clusterpoint 4, an evolution of its database software now becoming a computing engine
• Central European Startup Awards celebrates local entrepreneurship and diversity in business
• Ukrainian startup StickerPipe wants to monetize chat traffic with a sticker SDK
• Latvian “Spotify for books” Fabula has launched in Finland with 11 publishers
• Sofia-based startup Imagga, which is known for its sophisticated technology for recognizing objects and concepts in digital pictures, has been awarded the Tech for Big Player Award
• Serbian-designed clock Rhei with a liquid display has received the Reddot Award for design concept
• Moscow startups are building their own ecosystem in an old telegraph station
• Estonian-founded Deekit and Czech-founded TeskaLabs have graduated from the TechStars London startup accelerator
• Tech projects from Kyiv Polytechnic Institute claim to have $26 million in committed funding
• Ukrainian inventor has created “DJ gloves,” a wireless MIDI controller that allows for gesture-based DJ-ing
• NUMA, an internationally-oriented startup accelerator in Moscow, is about to launch its first 6-month program
• British mobile app Trafi with Lithuanian roots has launched in Russia with a plan to invest $1 million in the local market expansion
• Ukrainian Capitan has released its AI-enhanced shopping list app
• Russia’s Buran Venture Capital has launched a new fund to invest in Central and Eastern Europe, Israel and Turkey
• WannaBiz, Ukraine’s last significant startup incubator, has almost stopped its activities to focus on venture investment
• Czech Republic-founded Socialbakers has launched an advanced analytics system on Weibo, China’s largest social network
• Two Russian startups – iCard and Survival Russian App – have received €50,000 each from Enterprise Ireland to move to the country

Funding deals and M&A

• Russian startup iRidium mobile has received a €283,000 grant from Skolkovo
• Russian VC fund Maxfield Capital has participated in a funding round for a local startup Marcaux
• Airbnb has bought Russian design studio Lapka and nobody knows why
• Russain local search and user review service Yell.ru has acquired Ukrainian-Russian startup YouScan and will invest $1 million in it
• Ukrainian email newsletter startup TriggMine has raised $300,000 in funding from an unnamed private investor
• Russian startup NFWare has attracted “up to $500,000” from Almaz Capital, Maxfield Capital and Telefónica
• Estonian blockchain-based startup marketplace Funderbeam has reached $2 million in funding with a final seed round
• Russian DNA analysis startup MyGenetics has attracted some €30,000 from an angel investor
• Moscow-based venture fund Ru-Net has invested in Delhi-based startup PepperTap, while Russian players are eyeing Indian market
• Polish private equity firm MCI Management has invested in Swedish fintech company iZettle
• Chinese fund Cybernaut has injected $70 million in a Russian-Chinese satellite project
• Russian billionaire Alisher Usmanov has invested “$100 million or more” in Virtus.pro, a popular local e-sports platform
• Pioneers Ventures has made it first investment, funding the Slovak startup Cloudo
• Russia’s O1 Group has invested no less than $20 million in foreign tech startups at the pre-IPO stage
• Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has invested $10 million in the Altair VC fund headed by Igor Ryabenkiy
• Russian VC fund Maxfield Capital has invested £300,000 (€417,000) in British property startup eMoov
• Russian VC fund Runa Capital II is among the three largest of all those raised in Q3’2015, according to Dow Jones
• Ericsson has announced an intention to acquire the Polish and Ukrainian operations of Ericpol, a software development company and long-time supplier to Ericsson
• Latvian startup TICO that positions itself as the killer of Uber has attracted €68,000 in funding from an unnamed angel investor
• Russia’s 2GIS has attracted $40 million in funding from the Baring Vostok and ru-Net VC funds
• Prague-based startup VersionPress that offers version control for WordPress has raised $400,000 in funding from Credo Ventures

Crowdfunding

• Russia’s Evapolar has hit its $100,000 funding goal on Indiegogo to create a personal air conditioner
• Ukrainian startup Smart Atoms, which raised $370,000 on Kickstarter, has begun shipping its LaMetric smart clock to backers after a delay of eight months
• Slovenian startup has launched a crowdfunding campaign for its app-and-scale kit for diabetics Easycarb
• Czech-founded 3DSimo has raised some $200,000 (and counting) for its multi-functional 3D printing pen, precision solder, burner and cutter device
• Slovenian startup Scoutee has reached the $50,000 goal on Kickstarter to fund its smart radar for baseball and other sports
• Ukrainian startup is on its way to raising $30,000 for an “emotion tracker” for you and your family members
• A team from Russia has raised almost $400,000 in a crowdfunding campaign for its clever reflection-based head-up display that works with any car

Laws and government

• Ukrainian government has launched a Web portal to track use of public funds
• The return of the Russian government’s Wikipedia meddling
• Bulgarian authorities have practically shut down Uber in Sofia
• Russia’s anti-monopoly agency has said that Google must correct contracts with mobile manufacturers by November 18
• Uber helps Estonian tax administration to create a new platform of tax declarations
• Czech broadband money caught in a political intrigue
• Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation has sued residents Parallels Research and Pharma Bio, accusing them in inappropriate use of some €660,000 of grants
• Messaging app Viber has reportedly bowed to Russian data-localization law and relocated user data to new servers
• Russia’s Internet Development Institute has proposed to ban the UDP protocol for corporate users
• Lithuania has allocated €193,000 for the research of a modern satellite propulsion system done by a space technology startup NanoAvionics
• Kosovar citizen has been detained in Malaysia for hacking US files for the IS
• Russian hackers have reportedly breached the House of Representatives’ email system
• Ukrainian hacker Sergey Vovnenko, who tried to set up American security expert Brian Krebs by sending heroin to his home, is facing charges in the US
• Russian hacker group has reportedly hacked Dow Jones for stock tips
• Russia-connected cyber-espionage group targets MH17 investigation team
• US officials are growing concerned over the activity of Russian submarines and spy ships near undersea Internet cables

Bigger companies

• Russia’s Mail.ru Group has open-sourced its Maps.me mapping app, making it available for developers to freely embed maps in their own apps
• Software developer Innovecs has opened internationally-oriented Blockchain R&D center in Kyiv
• Russian scientists have created a new sensor, which they claim to be able to detect cancer cells and diagnose diseases such as HIV, hepatitis, and herpes
• The Silicon Valley Comes to the Baltics conference has moved from Vilnius to Riga
• Russia’s popular online classifieds site Avito has acquired delivery service aggregator CheckOut and prepares for IPO
• Yandex could seek a deal with Microsoft to become part of its Windows 10 platform in Russia and potentially other markets
• Kaspersky Lab claims that an Android app that allowed users to listen to their music from the VK social network has stolen login details from hundreds of thousands people
• Hundreds of Russian tech companies are considering entering the Latin American market, primarily the Cuban market
• Facing China slowdown, Alibaba and JD find solace in Russia
• Yandex continues its push onto Android with a Launcher for low-end smartphones
• Yandex and Microsoft have announced a strategic cooperation agreement to offer Yandex as the default homepage and search engine for users in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Turkey and several other countries in the region
• Yandex has backpedalled on the new version of its movie platform Kinopoisk after a flurry of criticism from users
• Ukrainian mobile carrier MTS Ukraine has changed its name to Vodafone in a deal announced with the English telecom giant
• Google has shut down its R&D centre in St. Petersburg
• Uber has launched in the Croatian capital, Zagreb
• Russian players are welcome to trade in China, say Chinese e-commerce platforms
• Mail.Ru Group has posted a revenue of about €140 million in Q3’2015, showing a 13.1 percent year-on-year growth
• Hong Kong investment company Rex Global has acquired a 64.9 percent stake in Russia’s Yota Devices in a $100 million deal
• Naspers has acquired a controlling stake in Avito.ru for $1.2 billion, valuing the company at $2.7 billion and making it one of Europe’s largest startup exits
• Russian online retailers are now allowed to sell goods through AliExpress
• Russia’s Parallels has launched a project to develop a locally built cloud computing platform to rival Amazon Cloud and Microsoft Azure
• Yandex has announced its financial results in Q3’2015

Good (long) reads from around the Web

• 3D-scanner, e-marketing personalization technology and “Uber for private jets” honored at Seedstars Moscow
•  IT for Girls, Girls for IT: Interview with CzechITas co-founder Monika Malátková
• Polish fintech has Momentum
• Pixel Heaven – where the past meets the future
• Meet the new head of Google Campus Warsaw
• The New Russian Data Protection Law: Five Important Things To Know
• Matka Polka 2.0: Women in tech in Poland
• Polish President has visited Startups in Krakow to inspire national Innovation
• BrainBasket initiative promotes the next generation of Ukrainian IT excellence
• Top ten things I learned from a Report about the Polish Startup Ecosystem
• Russia’s online gaming scene 2015
• Varna Startup City Guide
• Startup Events in CEE until the end of 2015
• Alarmed by police searches, Ukrainian IT firms are threatening to quit the country
• Report: R&D spending and university incubation are critical success factors for Russian entrepreneurship
• Dealflow from Latvia: Q3, 2015
• How Serbian developer Nordeus reached 110 million players worldwide in five years
• The Dukes: 7 Years Of Russian Cyber-Espionage
• Ukrainian Brainbasket Foundation aims to teach programming skills to veterans, people forced to flee war
• 7 Things Every Entrepreneur Should Know About Russian Startup Scene
• EU-US Safe Harbour and forced data localisation: Lessons from Russia
• Report: Nearly 100,000 of Ukrainians for in the IT industry
• 5 Lithuanian Startups To Know
• Estonia Or Silicon Valley – What’s The Difference?