Page 22 - bne IntelliNews weekly newspaper June 23

Weekly Lists
June 23, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 22
bne:TMT Three state-backed
venture funds launched to help Russian startups go global
Nokia expands Romanian tech centre under €73mn investment
Russia’s Skolkovo Foundation announced the launch of Skolkovo Ventures, a group of three new investment funds devoted to IT, industrial technology and biotech, East-West Digital News reports.
The funds, which have been set up in partnership with the state- backed fund of funds RVC, will operate out of an office in the Skolkovo tech park on the outskirts of Moscow. They will be headed by Vasily Belov, who formerly served as the Foundation’s senior vice president for innovations.
The new funds will focus on helping companies go global and attract foreign investment, he said.
Nokia Romania is in the process of investing another €73mn in extending its R&D centre for the telecommunication industry
just opened this month, economica.net reported on June 20. The Finnish company claims it is the largest R&D telecommunications centre in the country.
Based in Timisoara, western Romania, Nokia’s R&D centre is part of a larger tech campus which includes a global services centre as well. The centre is developing wireless broadband technologies used in applications such as IoT (internet of things) big data and mobile communications.
In 2016, the share of Russians aged 15-72 years, buying goods and services on the internet increased from 20% to 23%. But Russia is still trailing the West’s participation levels of more than two thirds, according to a study by Russia’s Higher School of Economics, reports Kommersant.
The HSE estimates there are 80.5mn internet users in Russia, of which 24mn people use the web to make purchases.
The most popular products bought included clothes, shoes and sporting goods (48% of online shoppers), household items (26%), electronics (14%). Goods that are considered "critical for life" fared less well: food (9%) and medical supplies (10%).
Online shopping is growing in Russia, but still half EU levels