Runa Capital Announces First Seed Investment of $2 Million in Russian Mobile Software Startup

MOSCOW, November 24, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Runa Capital, a new Russian venture capital fund, today announced its first investment of $2 million in OnAir3G, a voice-enabled mobile social networking platform. Moscow-based OnAir3G is a start-up founded by online and mobile pioneer Andrey Vasilevsky who also co-founded SmartCom, a developer of navigation software for Symbian, Windows Mobile and J2ME.

Today's announcement marks Runa Capital's first investment since launching in August 2010 with the goal of offering $30 million in seed financing to start-ups in rapid growth tech sectors. These include cloud computing, machine learning, virtualisation and mobile & internet applications.

"There is a huge amount of innovation happening in the ever-expanding market for mobile software. This is why it is critical to ensure that promising start-ups are given the opportunity to accelerate their entry into this space," said Dmitry Chikhachev, managing partner of Runa Capital. "The team at OnAirG has been involved in some pioneering work in both mobile software and Internet-based services. This is why we are extremely excited to be a part of what may well be the next killer mobile application."

In 2007, OnAir3G founder and CEO Andrey Vasilevsky sold SmartCom to Yandex, Russia's largest internet company. The innovative mapping application is currently used every day by millions of motorists to avoid traffic jams in a number of major Russian cities. OnAir3G aims to replicate this success with a powerful new voice-enabled mobile social networking platform designed for use on 30 million internet-enabled mobile phones currently used in the Russia.

"The current economic climate poses a number of challenges for start-ups, particularly when it comes to bringing new innovations to market," said Andrey Vasilevsky OnAir3G founder and CEO. "In a short space of time Runa Capital has been able to bring to bear its significant expertise in the world stage to help accelerate our plans and ambition for success. We are very proud to be named the first investment opportunity from this exciting new venture capital fund."

OnAir3G will be publicly launched in Q2 (April to June) 2011.

About Runa Capital:

Runa Capital is an early stage venture capital fund established to pursue opportunities in the rapidly growing areas of Cloud Computing, Internet and Mobile Applications. Runa Capital is run by a team of successful entrepreneurs, most of whom have worked together for over 15 years. It is a united team with broad geographical and cross-industry experience, as well as an extensive professional network. Runa Capital investment team members possess an excellent track record in tech investments.

Runa Capital's investment strategy focuses on early stage opportunities in Russia, where the venture capital is scarce and deal flow abundant, as well as Russian tech teams abroad. The key execution point is to select promising teams and drive and support them in the global marketplace, turning them into international champions.

    Press Contact
    Satyen Dayal - Spark Communications for Runa Capital
    Email: [email protected]
    Tel: +44(0)207-436-0420

SOURCE Runa Capital