Runa Capital Invests $500,000 in Cloud Development Platform

MOSCOW, December 13, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- Runa Capital, a new Russian venture capital fund, today announced an investment of $500,000 in Hivext.com, a cloud-based application development platform. Hivext is designed to give developers of cloud applications a low-cost, independent means to create complex web applications while at the same time significantly reducing time to market.

To date, developers looking to write applications in the cloud have had a choice of platforms such as Microsoft Azure, Google Apps Engine and Heroku (acquired by SalesForce last week). Hivext will offer developers an alternative platform, enabling them to develop at a more abstract level directly in the cloud. In addition, Hivext is targeted at the mass web development community and supports a range of most popular web development languages, from PHP through to Java.

Today's announcement is Runa Capital's second investment since its August 2010 launch. It follows hot on the heels of November's investment in OnAir3G, continuing Runa Capital's goal of offering $30 million in seed financing to start-ups in rapid growth technology sectors such as cloud computing, machine learning, virtualisation and mobile & internet applications.

"We believe the cloud is where the future of computing lies. As more services and applications move to the cloud, it makes perfect sense that development should also happen there," said Dmitry Chikhachev, Managing Partner of Runa Capital. "Hivext is at the front of this movement and we are keen to support strong technology teams with Hivext proving it has the strength necessary to be a success. Coupled with this, Hivext also has excellent synergy with many of our partners' other investments."

The Hivext team has been working on its technology for the past 2 years. In summer 2010, the team won the DevGeneration 2010 software developers competition by Softline, Russia's largest software distributor. Hivext aims to provide a platform for developers to create their own applications without being limited to using specific programming languages, downloading specific software or relying on specific data centres.

Hivext.com is currently available in Beta and is scheduled for commercial release in Q3 (July to September) 2011. Along with pre-configured infrastructure, the Hivext platform will offer a components library (authentication, user rights management, file storage, etc.), application templates and services library.

"Previously, when writing web applications, developers would have to write the code, upload it to a test server and run it - a time-consuming process requiring access to specialised equipment," said Ruslan Sinitskiy, CEO, Hivext. "By using a cloud-based platform, these problems are removed: applications can be written and tested directly in the cloud, with no need for extra infrastructure investment and configuration. Runa's support is a fantastic opportunity for us, not just for its financial investment but also for the ecosystem of potential partners and customers Runa brings that will help accelerate our growth."

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.

SOURCE Runa Capital