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RusBase – a joint project of RVC and Afisha Startup – enters the world markets

In November 2012, the Russian Startup Afisha project with the support of JSC RVC, Skolkovo Technopark, Runa Capital, Moscow Seed Fund and Fast Lane Ventures, as well as the Digital October Center, launches a new platform – RusBase, the RVC press service reports. The English-language service will allow you to integrate into the global venture community as efficiently as possible. For Western investors, RusBase will become a universal interface for entering the Russian market, and it will help companies from Russia to find foreign investors.

Using the new resource, startups will be able to enter the list of investment-attractive Russian IT projects and gain access to leading Western funds. The RusBase database will allow foreign investors to find the necessary, reliable information on the Russian market, establish contacts with international partners for co-financing.

The head of the service for working with partners of JSC "RVC" Evgenia Mayer notes: "We helped the project because we believe that this will make the Russian venture capital market more transparent for both domestic and foreign investors. The idea to make an English version is very timely. We are very pleased to realize that the project is supported not only by us, but also by other significant players in the ecosystem, which, I hope, will make it successful and self-sufficient."

The main sources of project monetization are providing international investors with a paid subscription to the project database, consulting services and distribution of analytical materials and market reports. According to Marina Treshkova, CEO of Fast Lane Ventures, the Russian Internet market is already one of the most promising for Western investors. "The dynamic growth of the segment and the available free niches create an excellent base both for entrepreneurs who are thinking about starting their own business, and for representatives of the international venture community who are looking for the most optimal investment opportunities," says Marina Treshchova. – Since our company is engaged in the launch and development of online companies, it is very important for us to cooperate with large resources that will accumulate all relevant information about market players. Such a partnership will help make the dialogue between representatives of the Russian venture capital market and foreign investors much more productive and substantive."

Alyona Popova, Internet entrepreneur and author of the Startup Afisha project, said: "In the winter of 2011, during negotiations between Startup Afisha, a well-known foreign publishing house and Black Ocean, we agreed on a new version. The investor insisted on developing the media part in addition to the service platform. The problem is that the market of venture business publications in Russia is now highly fragmented, and we want to make the niche more capacious and information homogeneous. Both I and the team have a desire to realize the most important idea – to make the rules of the game in the market understandable, and the startup market itself more systematic."

RusBase aims to become the main international media project that will cover the Russian venture industry. This will help create a new image of the Russian market as open and one of the most dynamically developing in the world, which will attract additional foreign investments to the country. Maria Adamyan, curator of the Digital October Center: "The new Startup Poster aims to achieve greater information transparency of the venture market, and for this it uses both analytical materials and crowdsourcing from all market participants. Both we and foreign funds have long needed a resource that will provide aggregated and reliable information about startups, founders and foundations."

"The lack of high–quality analytical information about the state of the venture capital investment market in Russia is a headache for both investors and startups. The creation of this platform is the first step towards increasing the availability of the information needed by everyone. I hope that the professionalism of the team will lead to increased awareness of all market participants," says Alexey Kostrov, Executive Director of the Moscow Seed Fund.

The first investor of the new project was the international technology holding Black Ocean, which invests about $ 3 million in the service on co-financing terms with several Western venture funds. Roman Gorovoy, CEO of Black Ocean Russia notes: "We have set ourselves the task of collecting 200 projects in the database by the end of the 1st quarter of 2013. We consider this figure to be the threshold for comfortable participation in the project of large Western investors who have already confirmed their readiness to participate in the project."

Over the next year, the creators of RusBase plan to expand databases on investment projects in the fields of alternative energy, medicine, biotechnology and other high-tech industries. Among the short–term plans is to attract key venture capital players from America, Europe (in particular, Germany) and Korea.

The company highlights several principles of the new service: creating an encyclopedia of the Russian startup market with the volume of transactions and figures for the main players; providing a set of tools for interaction between investors and startups aimed at concluding deals. All information provided in the project database will be based on open public transactions and personal information of analysts and independent experts.

"The Skolkovo Technopark should become the circulatory system of the future innograd, since its main goal is to create comfortable conditions for the life and work of Skolkovo startups. This includes the arrangement of modern office space, and the organization of R&D laboratories based on the co-sharing model, career center services, consulting, business coaching, and many other services. RusBase tools fit perfectly into this concept, as they provide real opportunities for direct and transparent exits of entrepreneurs to the global investment community, without unnecessary procedures and intermediaries. On the other hand, we are ready to provide interested foreign startups from the RusBase community with the infrastructure and comprehensive services of the technopark to ensure a full–fledged entry into the Russian market," said Sergey Kurilov, CEO of the Skolkovo Technopark.

Portal "Eternal youth" http://vechnayamolodost.ru17.10.2012