Commit Capital is the corporate venture capital unit of Russia’s national telecoms operator Rostelecom, formed in mid-2015 from a nascent Rostelecom Venture Capital, at which point Alexey Kupriyanov stepped up from investment director to CEO.
Andrey Polouektov had just moved from head of mergers and acquisitions to also incorporate strategy and the creation of Commit came at the same time as the change.
While Russia has had relatively limited domestic corporate venturing activity, Russian Venture Company, the state-backed fund of funds and ecosystem developer, highlighted Commit, which made its first three deals last year.
In November, Commit invested R130m ($2m) in RDP, a local developer of network solutions for telecoms operators, for a 15% stake.
Commit’s first $1.5m investment went to Raidix’s series A round for a 30% stake. The fund also invested in Brain4Net’s $1.75m seed round for a 20.3% stake.
Alexei Basov, vice-president at Rostelecom said its first venture capital fund transactions were part of “its strategy to establish a long-term technological advantage in the industry’s fast growing digital segment and reduce its overall dependency on foreign technology providers”.
Before rejoining Rostelecom in June 2014, Kupriyanov had been an investment banking director for a few months at Advance Capital.
Kupriyanov had first worked at Rostelecom for more than two years as deputy head of M&A after similar spells on M&A and investment banking after the completion of his master’s in finance from State University.