The corporate venturing delegation to Moscow last month, organised by Global Corporate Venturing (GCV), state fund of funds Russian Venture Company (RVC), and technology accelerator Global Venture Alliance, found that despite an economy challenged by the weak prices of oil and the ruble, together with sanctions from the EU and US, there is a vibrant venture community, while government support of innovation continues apace.
RVC launched three new funds in 2015 and now has 21 venture funds. They approved 191 projects for investment and had 24 exits as of the end of last year. They saw 111% revenue growth from their portfolio companies bringing the value of RVC-backed portfolio company funds to $44.4m in 2015.
In 2013 RVC launched the largest accelerator programme in Russia and the CIS, Generation S, which has more than 150 partners and received applications from over 4,200 startups from 30 countries.
RVC was also commissioned last year to run the National Technology Initiative (NTI), an effort to ensure the competitive position of the country for the next 10 to 20 years. It is perhaps the first attempt by Russia to identify priorities based on market demand rather than on the basis of the available technology.
Other government initiatives to foster innovation include a new government department, the Agency of Technological Development. It has been established to support technology transfer and breakthrough technologies and to help small and medium-sized technology companies to reach the standards required to work with large state and private companies.
The CVC delegation met with senior politicians, including a deputy prime minister, Arkady Dvorkovich, and the minister for telcommunications and media, Nikolay Nikiforov. They also visited the Technopolis technopark, the Global Venture Alliance accelerator, had dinner with the country’s most prominent VCs and CVCs and attended Russia’s largest innovation conference, the Open Innovation Forum. Panel discussions on corporate venturing at the Forum were moderated by GCV’s Tim Lafferty, RVC’s director of communications George Gogolev and founder of Rubicon Capital, Andrew Romans. Romans has just published a book, Masters of Corporate Venturing, in which he interviewed around fifty corporate venturers, past and present.
Corporations represented in the fifteen-strong delegation included Pepsico, Evonik, Schlumberger and Naspers. Peter Nagler, head of innovation at Evonik, one of Germany’s largest chemical companies, said after the trip “There is a vibrant community building the Russian venturing ecosystem.” Zamir Shukhov, CEO of GVA added “We believe that this delegation was the first of its kind in Russia and will become a milestone for future development or partnerships between global CVC’s and Russian partners.”