Russian venture investments amounted to at least $868 million in 2019 (excluding exits), up 13% year-on-year, EWDN.com wrote citing a yearly report from DSight, a business intelligence agency focusing on the Russian venture market.
Although this performance remains very modest by international comparison (USA: $136 billion, UK: $14.3 billion, Germany: $6.6 billion), it set “a historic record,” DSight said in the report.
Much of this growth is attributed to increasing deal amounts. These amounts grew nearly two-fold in seed stage transactions (to $0.2 million), more than three-fold (to $1.1 million) at the “start-up” phase and 1.6 times (to $78 million) as far as mature companies were concerned.
Meanwhile, only 230 transactions were reported in 2019, down 26% from 2018. The number of exits remained stable at 38. On the pre-seed and seed investment scene, a new generation angel investors and micro VCs surfaced while corporations and corporate accelerators continued asserting themselves aggressively.
Niche funds continued springing up in such segments as fintech, agritech, sports tech, and industrial tech. Several independent funds refocused on fresh business models — from venture loans to venture builders or studios.
Meanwhile, all private VC funds, with few exceptions, set their sights on international projects or Russian ones operating globally, according to DSight co-founder Arseniy Dabbakh.
B2B and B2C companies were equally attractive to investors, with 112 and 118 transactions, respectively. In terms of amount, B2C outpaced B2B investment ($537 million vs. $332 million). Deals involving business software companies turned out to be the most numerous.
Deep tech companies demonstrated a strong appeal, particularly in the fields of machine learning, 5G Internet, IoT, medicine technology, industrial safety and personal data protection, DSight said.
