By Mikhail Baklanov
Within first eleven months of the current year Skolkovo residents received 5.5. billion roubles (circa $170 mln.), told Sk.ru Eduard Kanalosh, Investment Director of The Skolkovo Foundation. This amount consists of both grant and investment commitments, i.e. deals to invest in Skolkovo startups. And only 184 million roubles (some $5.6 million) from that amount are grants of the Foundation itself. The rest is external financing.
The Investment Director of The Skolkovo Foundation Eduard Kanalosh: “The results of the year are inspiring"
From this external financing (about 4/6 billion roubles), only about 600 mln. roubles ($18.2 mln.) are related in one way or another to Skolkovo grants, and the rest of financing came to Skolkovo without any association with granting activities. “We’ve taken quite a significant share of the Russian venture market”, said Eduard Kanalosh. The Investment Director clarified that more precise evaluation isn’t possible now, as data on national venture market results for the year 2013 hasn’t been declared yet. “Last year, he said, according to Dow Jones data, the Russian venture market, i.e. the market of high-tech companies, comprised $300 mln. This year, as of November 20, the Skolkovo companies raises a bit more than $110 mln. It won’t be correct to correlate one of mentioned number to another, Kanalosh said, as they came from different sources. But in any case, he said, they point out on quite serious positions of the Skolkovo Foundation on the national venture market”.
The investment results of the year, which, I suppose will be better by 10-20% by the year end, when the final data comes, Eduard Kanalosh called “inspiring”. “Investors look at our startups, they see the quality of the companies, they see an opportunity to invest – and they invest, and it’s just great”, he said. The major deal of 2013 is $25 mln investment into Ostrovok.ru, which created a hotel booking business. The investment was made by Frontier Ventures, a Russian venture capital fund, Accel Partners and General Catalyst were co-investors. Other big deals are: Dauria with $20 mln. deal and OkToGo with $11 mln.
Eduard Kanalosh also thinks that the key indicator is not even volume of investment, but rather number of deals. Within 11 months of this year 31 companies, Skolkovo residents raised investments (compared to 18 deals for the same period of the previous year). “Our target for the next year is 50 companies”, said the Skolkovo Foundation Investment Director.