In accordance with the terms of the transaction, VTB Capital Venture Business led series C investment into Fast Lane Ventures with a total value of US$18 million. The funds will be used to develop the current portfolio of companies Fast Lane Ventures has, as well as provide finance for new investments. It will also be used to further strengthen Fast Lane Venture’s team and expertise. VTB Capital Venture Business is considering the possibility of direct investment into Fast Lane Ventures’ portfolio of companies in the future.

The transaction is expected to strengthen VTB Capital Venture Business and Fast Lane Venture’s position in the Russian internet market. VTB Capital Venture Business has prioritised B2C internet for investment and intends to increase their market share here by the end of 2012.

Aidar Kaliev, Global Head of Venture Business at VTB Capital, said: “The Russian internet market is placed number one in Europe, however, the level of competition is still rather low in many segments. This shortfall means we can initiate new trends and establish leadership in new areas. Fast Lane Ventures opens a window of opportunity for us into the world of internet consumption. This market has very high potential and this reinforces our tactics to enter here as soon as possible, as we do not want to miss any opportunities.  The Fast Lane Venture team is one of the most professional teams in the Russian internet market, with proven capabilities to build online businesses fast and effectively, bringing them up to market leading standards. Working with Fast Lane Ventures will help us enter the segment smoothly and expand our presence in this market significantly.”

Within its two years of operation, Fast Lane Ventures has launched eighteen fast growing companies online, two of which have been successfully purchased by strategic investors. The total volume of investments in Fast Lane Ventures and its portfolio companies has amounted to more than $60million. The investors list includes Direct Group, eVenture Capital Partners, Kinnevik, Russia Partners, Intel Capital, UMJ (Russia) and many others. Fast Lane Ventures has developed and implemented a solution called Fast 50 which enables new businesses to be launched in 50 days. The company plans to further expand its portfolio of companies.

Marina Treshchova, CEO of Fast Lane Ventures, said: “Demand far exceeds supply in the area of high quality online services and internet audience numbers are increasing all the time. This defines the key trend of the Russian internet market where the consumer is at the forefront of the industry. Within just two years, Fast Lane Ventures has achieved leadership in the development, launch and promotion of new online businesses because we have the expertise needed to carry out these transactions quickly and efficiently. We have always aspired to grow our companies into segment leaders and with VTB Capital as a partner, I am confident we will achieve this much faster.”

The partnership with VTB Capital will unveil new opportunities for Fast Lane Ventures. Apart from the evident financial support to help expand its portfolio and strengthen the market positions of its operating businesses, this partnership also provides a considerable reputational boost.  In collaborating with the leading investment bank, this acts as a symbol of trust for the Russian and international community.

Victor Belogub, Chief Investment Manager at VTB Capital’s Venture Business, commented: “This exciting new partnership is only at the early stages, but I believe it will grow into a long-term and low risk cooperation. To start, we aim to invest for approximately 5-7 years and are confident that the value of Fast Lane Ventures portfolios will multiply during this period.” 

Stefano Zuppet, Global Head of TMT Investment Banking, VTB Capital, highlights: “I believe the strategic partnership of the two companies will further fuel interest in the Russian internet market from the international investor community. To date, the key positions in Runet have been taken by local players, unlike in the major European internet segments, and this means entering the Russian market requires a trustworthy partner and deep knowledge of the unique idiosyncrasies and upsides of the Russian online space. The union of VTB Capital Venture Business and Fast Lane Ventures will contribute to further increase the momentum of international investors coming to the Russian market, which will provide capital inflow, additional operational expertise and further accelerate the overall growth of the sector.”

The makers of child-aimed social trading-card game Fight My Monster have just announced that they have reached their one millionth player. It’s aimed at boys aged between 3 and 11, but the average-aged player is 10 years old (10.4 to be precise).

According to the makers, the under-13 crowd is a tough sell in the gaming world. Keeping them engaged is even tougher. Fight My Monster has managed to do both so far. The challenge, the creators say, is getting the word out. Children under 13 may not always be granted access to social networking sites (like Facebook and Twitter) or personal email accounts.

They also claim four times the engagement of Moshi Monsters (a monster-based online world for kids) and almost twice that of Facebook among children in the UK.

Dylan Collins for Fight My Monster spoke with GamesBeat about the title and its growth, saying that they are the “fastest growing online game for boys in the UK.” Players have generated more than six million cards to date, and Fight My Monster has seen more than 32 million battles.

According to him, companies like Activision, Jakks Pacific, and Nickelodeon have each spent somewhere in the realm of $35 to $50 million to create titles such as Skylanders and Monkey Quest to cater to young boys. “We’ve done it with what they spend on a good night out,” says Collins, “$150k, to be exact.”

They’ve managed to raise $2.1 million in funding and have already gathered major investing from big names such as Greycroft Partners, eVentures, and some well-known angel investors. However, they’ve yet to touch that money. Those aren’t bad numbers for a company that just hired its fifth employee.

He adds that Fight My Monster is seeing “runaway playground growth” and has gathered “significant interest from the licensing world,” such as a TV production deal with BrownBag Films (which is behind Disney’s Doc McStuffins).

Collins thinks that some of the success comes from the fact that Fight My Monster is actually a trading-card game, “I think the reason we’ve grown so fast is that we’re not a virtual world. We’re an online trading-card game. Most of our direct competition is very much the former or a clone of the former.”

Check out the nice little infographic they put together: Fight My Monster Reaches 1 Million

More info at: Fight My Monster.

Eucalyptus Systems, the developer of an open source, on-premise private cloud computing platform, has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), Benchmark Capital, BV Capital, and New Enterprise Associates (NEA). To date, Eucalyptus has raised a total of $55.5 million in capital.

Led by former CEO of MySQL, Marten Mickos; Eucalyptus helps companies create private cloud computing infrastructure on their own servers. Eucalyptus’ software sits inside businesses’ firewalls, using their own hardware. As Mickos tells us, IT administrators install the software on their servers, which sits on top of the severs, and are then are able to create private cloud.

The company, which competes with VMware, also recently announced a partnership with Amazon Web Services to use the cloud giant’s API to connect Amazon’s cloud services with the Eucalyptus-powered private clouds created by companies. And the company says its partner ecosystem has more than doubled to include over 200 of the top cloud and infrastructure automation vendors.

Eucalyptus enables 25,000 cloud starts each year at organizations including Aerospace Corporation, InterContinental Hotels Group, Plinga, PUMA, USDA, and USASpending.gov. This includes instances at more than 20 percent of Fortune 100 companies. For example, Puma uses the startup’s software to run its consumer facing site.

“We are rapidly expanding operations to meet the needs of advanced cloud deployments by customers and partners worldwide. This funding will help us move even faster in a rapidly growing cloud market,” said Mickos.

He adds that Eucalyptus has nearly tripled its employees in the last year and half, and will be looking to use the funding to add additional sales and technical support.

Just two years after launching its incubator for Russian web companies, Moscow-based Fast Lane Ventures is making its second significant exit with the sale of TV and online retail service Shopping Live.
According to local reports, Fast Lane and other investors are selling up their stake in the company — a Russian teleshopping channel with an internet-based fulfillment and backend — to German giant Home Shopping Europe, the owner of channels like HSE24.

Brazil’s startup ecosystem is taking off, but until now, Thees said VC firms have fallen into two camps. On the one hand, you have small, local firms, and on the other hand, you have “helicopter VCs” who have offices in Silicon Valley or elsewhere, and make their investments from afar. Redpoint eVentures, on the other hand, has the resources of an international firm, but Thees is also “Brazilian born and raised,” and both he and de Vries are based out of Sao Paolo.

“We do have a local presence and dedicated partners, but at the same time we do bring a very integrated and a global network,” Thees said.

International firms will probably find the “high-pedigree Brazilians who studied at Stanford or [Harvard Business School] and know the lingo,” de Vries said, but Redpoint eVentures’ local connections will help it find entrepreneurs outside that circle.

He also touched on one aspect of the global strategy that I wasn’t expecting — in addition to connecting Brazilian startups with international partners and customers, the firm is also looking for ideas that it can bring back to Brazil. So if there’s a new product that seems to be taking off in China, and it seems like it would also work in Brazil, Redpoint eVentures might put together a startup to pursue the idea locally.

The firm has announced four investments — Viajanet, Grupo Xango, Shoes 4 You, and 55Social. Thees and de Vries told me they have since made a fifth investment, in yet-to-be-launched jewelry site Sophie & Juliete.

Source: Techcrunch.

Source: SoCalTech

Redpoint and BV Capital’s eVentures have combined forces to go after some of the fast-growing entrepreneurial activity taking place in Brazil, together launching a new firm — Redpoint eVentures. The joint venture, to be based in Sao Paolo, will be led by founding partners Yann de Vries and Anderson Thees.

The idea is to put feet on the ground as the two VC firms hunt for new opportunities in Brazil, Mathias Schilling, co-founder of BV Capital eVentures told me in a phone interview last week. Rather than fly back and forth between Silicon Valley and Sao Paolo (or other parts of Brazil), having a local office will increase the number of entrepreneurs that the firms can get exposure to and the speed at which deals get done. Already the two VC firms have made investments in three local Brazilian startups: Viajanet, Grupo Xango and Shoes4you.

Redpoint eVentures will focus on providing consumer Internet, e-commerce, mobile, media and cloud services to the Brazilian startups it chooses to work with. eVentures has already built teams around the world, and has a presence in Europe, Russia, China and Japan. By leveraging that international experience and combining it with Redpoint’s Silicon Valley focus, the two companies hope to bring best practices to the burgeoning Brazil startup market.

Together, Redpoint and BV Capital’s eVentures have more than $3 billion under management, and have invested in companies including Groupon, Angie’s List and HomeAway. That said, Schilling wouldn’t provide any financial details around the new joint venture, with respect to whether it would have its own cash to make deals or whether it would be used to funnel deals to the firms’ existing funds.

Redpoint Ventures and BV Capital’s eVentures have begun a new venture capital firm called Redpoint eVentures based in São Paulo, Brazil — the latest illustration of the country’s growing Internet start-up ecosystem.

Yann de Vries and Anderson Thees are its founding partners. Mr. de Vries was head of corporate development for Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America for Cisco Systems until last year and was previously a BV Capital eVentures principal.
Mr. Thees, who is Brazilian, was previously chief executive of Apontador, a site similar to Yelp. Before that, he was vice president of business development at BuscaPe, a price comparison site based in São Paulo that was a pioneer in Brazil’s start-up scene, one of the few survivors of the first dot-com boom.

“You will see a number of investments” from the joint venture in the coming months, said Mathias Schilling, a co-founder of BV Capital’s eVentures, whose portfolio includes Groupon and Angie’s List, and was involved in Groupon’s entry to Brazil.
BV Capital is based in San Francisco but also has international dedicated funds with the name eVentures in Europe, Russia and a combined one for China and Japan. Starting a local firm often signals interest in raising a local fund, in particular given BV Capital’s background, but Mr. Schilling declined to comment.

For Redpoint, based in Menlo Park, Calif., the new venture signals a shift in its strategy toward Brazil. The firm’s United States portfolio includes WebTV and Netflix. It has also been a frequent guest in Brazil’s start-up scene, even holding “speed dating” sessions with a large number of entrepreneurs in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
While that did not directly lead to any investments, a Redpoint founding partner, Jeff Brody, told DealBook the firm had already invested more than $40 million in the country, including four Brazilian Internet companies and two more that were about to close. Last year, Redpoint invested $3 million with IG Expansion in 55Social, a social media marketing company.

Redpoint made its first investment in 2010, a seed round in Grupo Xango, which was followed by a financing round made with BV Capital and Index Ventures. The three firms invested a total of $6 million in Grupo Xango, a holding company based in Rio de Janeiro that has interests in the cloud, security and e-commerce space. For the last couple of years, Redpoint partners have frequently traveled to Brazil, often visiting for a full week each trip, saying the lack of direct flights from San Francisco to Brazil makes a weeklong stay the only efficient way to conduct business there. But in addition to seeking to ease the demands of such travel, Redpoint also expects Brazil to steal a page from China’s Internet start-up ecosystem playbook in the coming years. Mr. Brody said that when Silicon Valley firms first took to China, they either tried to create or buy investment teams.

“Now 10 years later, it is all about being local,” he said. “That same evolution is likely to happen in Brazil and quickly.” Still, there are advantages to partnering with another foreign investment firm rather than a Brazilian one.

First, Redpoint points to its relationship with BV Capital. It has partnered with the firm for several years in many markets and was drawn to the firm’s international experience. Additionally, Brazil’s venture capital industry remains nascent, with few players focused on early stage Internet companies. Mr. Brody said Redpoint did not have any serious discussions with local firms and that “I could not hire a Brazilian V.C. with 10 years of success with exits because he does not exist.”

Other international Internet investors have a local presence in Brazil, including Intel Capital, Boston-based Flybridge Capital Partners and London-based Atomico Ventures, which has been in the country since 2010.

Redpoint eVentures plans to focus on early stage companies in the consumer Web, e-commerce, mobile, media and cloud services sectors. Redpoint itself had already invested in three Brazilian companies before they had either revenue or products. It will also focus on Brazil-based entrepreneurs rather than pan-Latin America. While Redpoint eVentures is keen on the Brazilian Internet start-up market, it is also aware of its drawbacks and believes that a local presence will help tackle some of them. Bureaucracy remains mind-bending, for starters. “Brazil today is much worse than it ever was in China,” Mr. Brody said. For example, the Grupo Xango deal took six months to close. Redpoint’s subsequent investments have taken less time, some around six weeks, but Mr. Brody says that it remains difficult to get bank accounts opened, file the entity formation and transfer money. Brazil also faces a shortage of engineers. Yet Mr. Brody says it has become easier to hire executives for portfolio companies, noting that in the past year and a half “there has been an awakening among traditional executives” that entrepreneurship can be a more viable career option.

The Brazilian technology blog www.startups.ig.com.br earlier reported the Redpoint eVentures formation.