The promoter Samolet decided to temporarily suspend risk investments due to sanctions and the increase in the key rate. This is what the group’s innovation director, Denis Kondrakhin, told Forbes.
Author:
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According to him, the company froze the management of the company in 2023, but does not exclude the possibility of returning to the investment market if it is again “economically justified.” The next discussion on the fate of the leadership is scheduled for six months.
Investing in foreign startups has become more difficult due to sanctions imposed after the special military operation in Ukraine. Samolet even had to sell several foreign assets, Kondrakhin noted. The company also does not consider investments in “friendly jurisdictions” due to the unpredictability of the sanctions situation and other unforeseen difficulties.
According to the top manager, starting business in Russia has become difficult. After 2022, Russian companies will increasingly be able to count on expansion abroad, and the Russian market turned out to be “insufficiently capable of ensuring a multiple increase in the cost of investments,” he explained. In addition, investments are complicated by the high interest rate, which has led to an increase in the price of capital, Kondrakhin said.
The Samolet group of companies has been involved in venture investments since 2020. The company not only developed businesses that could be integrated into the holding, but also invested in non-development projects. In July 2021, Samolet invested 136 million rubles in the “Your Place” network of culinary coworking spaces. Kondrakhin told Forbes that the company is ready to abandon the project.
The Russian venture market in the first half of 2024 grew by 31% year-on-year, up to $46 million, Vedomosti wrote, citing a Dsight study. Assessing the real volumes of the market, as well as the number and volume of transactions on it, is “quite difficult” due to the non-public nature of most of them, noted financier Pavel Okhonin in a comment to the newspaper.
In 2023, the volume of venture investments in Russia fell to a record low of $118 million, that is, more than 10 times less than in 2022, the Moscow Innovation Agency calculated in March.
Author:
Mikhail Zelenin
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.
