Funding opportunities
The US venture capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) has partnered with VTB, a Russian commercial banking group to form a new Russian venture capital fund, DFJ-VTB Aurora.
The team will manage a family of funds, which are rouble-based and convert to approximately US $150 million, for investments in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). In addition, planning is underway for an off-shore fund with flexibility to invest in technology companies headquartered both inside and outside of Russia and CIS.
The funds will be managed by four partners; Andrey Zyuzin, Andrey Morozov, and Sergey Romashov will operate in Russia, and Alexandra Johnson will be based in Silicon Valley.
DFJ’s network is currently made up of more than 130 venture capital professionals, across 33 cities in the US, Asia, Europe and South America, with more than 550 portfolio companies funded and over $5.7 billion of capital under management. Recent investments include DivX, Skype, Mobile365, Baidu, EnerNOC, and Hotmail.
The DFJ Network will provide the Russian partners with access to additional deal flow, due diligence, contacts, best-of-breed practices, and co-investment partners.
“DFJ has been observing the Russian start up environment for the last several years. It is safe to say that with the influx of institutional money, governmental support, and the migration of management talent of Russian origin back to Russia, the ecosystem for technology startups is now emerging,” said Tim Draper, Founder and Managing Director of DFJ.
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