Venture capital fund Runa Capital is to increase its total fund size to USD50 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 USD30 million, the 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,"
says Dmitry Chikhachev (pictured), managing partner of Runa Capital. "Today’s expansion of our fund to USD50 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.
