Runa Capital to Invest $50M in Russian High-Tech Startups

MOSCOW, February 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Runa Capital, a venture capital fund, today announced it will increase its total fund size to US$50 million. The decision to increase the fund follows growing interest among Russian and international technology entrepreneurs and investors, who share Runa Capital's vision of helping early-stage Russian technology companies compete at a global level.

Originally established with seed financing of US$30 million, today's increase will ensure even more young Russian and CIS high-tech teams can benefit from the firm's capital, expertise and strategic partnerships.

Runa Capital's list of partners now combines more than 20 world-class technology entrepreneurs and professional investors. Among the new partners are Edward Nicholson, former CEO of Brunswick-UBS in Russia and the CIS and Alexander Katalov, investor in Begun, Softkey, Alawar and ElcomSoft. Runa's focus remains on investing in rapid growth tech sectors, including cloud computing, machine learning, virtualisation and mobile & internet applications.

"In 2010 we successfully invested in two projects - the voice-enabled social network OnAir3G and cloud-based application development platform Hivext.com,"

said Dmitry Chikhachev, managing partner of Runa Capital. "Today's expansion of our fund to $50 million will ensure that we can continue to build upon our primary objective of elevating talented Russian technology teams to the world stage."

Runa Capital plans to announce another eight to ten transactions in 2011.

More information on Runa Capital is available on the fund's website:

http://www.runacap.com.

About Runa Capital:

Runa Capital is an early stage venture capital fund established to pursue opportunities in the rapidly growing areas of Cloud Computing, Internet and Mobile Applications. Runa Capital is run by a team of successful entrepreneurs, most of whom have worked together for over 15 years. It is a united team with broad geographical and cross-industry experience, as well as an extensive professional network. Runa Capital investment team members possess an excellent track record in tech investments.

Runa Capital's investment strategy focuses on early stage opportunities in Russia, where the venture capital is scarce and deal flow abundant, as well as Russian tech teams abroad. The key execution point is to select promising teams and drive and support them in the global marketplace, turning them into international champions.