East-West Digital News
The Microsoft Russia Seed Fund has recently disbursed $140,000 in grants to four Russian startups, bringing the total number of young Russian tech companies it has backed to 35.
Last week, Moscow’s AdWired received $50,000 to continue developing its mobile advertising platform. Minutta, a service from Orel, in Central Russia, which has been developing an app to create online video slide shows and animations, got a $30,000 grant. Both startups are residents of API Moscow, a recently launched business incubator in the Russian capital which is now officially partnering with Microsoft.
Two other starutups: WinkCam, from Siberia’s Novosibirsk, a developer of motion recognition technology for mobile and portable devices; and another Moscow-based team, KidErudite, which offers mobile learning software for preschool children, each received $30,000.
Set up three years ago, the Microsoft Russia Seed Fund has already provided $1.36 million worth of financial support for 35 startups and has plans to back another 60 or 70 technology companies between now and 2020.
Examples of its grant funding activity include: Choister, a real estate search system developer that launched its pilot version a year ago; RealSpeaker, a startup from Kazan, Tatarstan, which offers a new approach to speech recognition; MoosCool, an artist promotion platform enabling composers of electronic dance music to earn money from their works; and target=”_blank”Appercode, a Novosibirsk-based startup whose flexible platform for the simultaneous development of mobile apps for a range of operating systems won the first prize earlier this month at BIT, Russia’s largest competition of technology teams and business plans.
Source: Microsoft Russia