The analytical company Dsight, especially for Forbes, based on the collected statistics, compiled a rating of companies with domestic founders that have attracted maximum investment from Russian and international venture funds and business angels. The publication also asked experts to evaluate the year of outgoing investment.
The five most funded startups in 2023 are:
- Electric car manufacturer Arrival raised $300 million (previously, the startup already surpassed a similar rating in 2020 with a total investment of $629.4 million), but if the company previously raised funds to scale and conquer the market globally, this year money is necessary to overcome financial difficulties,
- inDrive, a taxi hailing service that became a “unicorn” in 2021 and that by 2023 will operate 60% in Latin America, raised $150 million from the General Catalyst fund, including for the development of cargo delivery.
- Mighty Buildings, a 3D printing startup whose revenue in 2023, according to various estimates, could reach $20 million, raised $52 million from Saudi Aramco’s Waed Ventures and other investors (previously Khosla Ventures, ArcTern Ventures, Abies invested in Igor Ryabenkiy’s Ventures, One Way Ventures and AltaIR Capital),
- Xpanceo, a developer of smart contact lenses with augmented reality, night vision, zoom and more, with testing planned for 2026, has raised $40 million from Hong Kong venture capital firm Opportunity Ventures.
- Collectly, a service to optimize payment systems in the healthcare sector, raised $29 million from Cabra VC, Y Combinator, Burst Capital and other investors; Collectly attracted the first investments immediately in the year of its founding (2016), and in 2023, according to TechCrunch, 300 thousand patients per day used the services of the service.
All the leaders of the rating, although founded by Russian-speaking founders, work abroad. In total, these five projects represent 571 million dollars, for comparison: in 2022, investments in the five leading startups amounted to 874 million dollars, in 2021, more than 1.1 billion dollars.
This indicates a significant crisis in the venture capital market, says Denis Efremov, director of the Fort Ross Ventures fund and leader of the rating “30 under 30” in the Forbes “Finance and Investments” category for 2020. And the founder of Disght, Arseniy Dabbakh, emphasizes that this is a global trend around the world caused by economic uncertainty.
In this context, the maximum injections go to startups that “definitely hit the mark”, as a rule, from high-tech business areas. This is also clear from the rating, where the leaders are companies that depend on AI, IoT, fintech, etc.
Alexandra Zotova, a partner at the Singapore fund Ruvento Ventures, makes an interesting observation: she notes that five projects of Russian-speaking founders attracted funding from major international funds and business angels. This suggests that the country of origin of the founders is not as important to them as the potential of the company.
Investors in the top 5 Russian startups include General Catalyst (investor in Airbnb, Stripe, etc.), Khosla Ventures (DoorDash, Instacart, OpenAI), Sapphire Ventures, Waed Ventures, Westwood Capital, etc.
The Russian Venture Telegram channel also summarizes the results of the investment year: over the last month there was open voting in five categories, and today the project team presented the winners:
- Release of the year: release of Kama Flow from EcomCom,
- State Investor of the Year: NTI Venture Fund,
- Corporate Investor of the Year: MTS Structures,
- Private Fund of the Year – Impact Capital,
- Startup of the year: Twinby.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
