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Investment
December 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
world is far from saturation, despite the rapid spread of new information technologies and a greater focus on users. Complex legacy systems and generic solutions like Excel still dominate in many spheres of business and life; moreover, ‘pen-and-paper’ solutions hold their ground as in the past,” Toporov notes.
Chachava says he is especially interested in business intelligence, Big Data analysis and AI when these are used to “optimize or replace tra- ditional business processes or perform business robotization.”
The new fund invests $2 million on average at the late seed stage, rounds A and B, explained Sto- porov. To be eligible, companies should already generate sales revenues on the global market.
Leta Capital II already has 8 companies in its portfolio. One of them is inDriver, an internation-
al passenger service in which the fund invested twice, in 2017 and 2018. This Siberian startup claims to be active in more than 140 cities in nine countries already.
The fund’s portfolio also includes Devar, which develops AR solutions for the printing industry; and Bllush, a social content delivery system for the European fashion and interior design retail industries.
The debut of the first Leta fund, in 2012, was marked by a failure. The fund invested significant amounts in hardware startup Displair, whose highs, lows and final bankruptcy one year later drew much attention in Russia. The fund did bet- ter in its next investments, with no other failures and three exits recorded so far. Thus, Leta Capi- tal’s portofolio companies RedHelper, Unomy and BrightBox were acquired by LiveTex, WeWork and Zurich Insurance Group, respectively.