HELSINKI - A new Russian venture fund formed jointly by the Skolkovo Foundation and Russian Venture Capital, a state investment vehicle, was presented to an international audience Wednesday at the Slush tech conference in Helsinki.
The new fund, Skolkovo Ventures, which is in the process of being set up, was presented as part of the Slush Global Partners dinner by Igor Drozdov, chairman of the board of the Skolkovo Foundation.
Skolkovo Foundation chairman Igor Drozdov and RVC's Gulnara Bikkulova. Photo: Sk.ru.
“The idea is to attract investment in our startups,” Drozdov told the audience of international investors and entrepreneurs.
“It will use funding from RVC, but not only from them: we hope that private investors will also join this initiative,” he said.
“We have the biggest platform in Russia: 1,500 companies that we know very well … We believe that many of them have very good prospects and we’re ready to take a risk and invest in these companies.”
Pekka Viljakainen, a Finnish advisor to Skolkovo Foundation president Victor Vekselberg, encouraged those present to visit the stand shared by Skolkovo and RVC at Slush — and to share their honest opinion on the Russian startups they saw there.
“If you see something great, that’s great; if you see something that needs to be developed, give feedback. That’s why we want to be part of the community. Being part of the community is to have and get feedback,” said Viljakainen.
Despite the creation of the new fund, RVC deputy CEO Gulnara Bikkulova acknowledged that the Russian innovations ecosystem still faced significant hurdles, such as the underdeveloped innovations industries outside Moscow and the fact that Russia is dominated by major corporations, making it difficult for startups to break into the market.
But she said the Russian innovations scene had changed beyond recognition in the last few years.
“Slush was first organised in 2008, eight years ago,” said Bikkulova.
“When I recall what was going on in Russia, there was no venture capital industry, nobody knew what a startup was, there were no venture capital investors and so on. Today we see many Russian startups going to global markets, a thousand startups emerging every year in Russia. It’s not just our efforts; all the development agencies in Russia and ministries are doing a lot to develop the innovation ecosystem in Russia.”