Rostelecom is preparing to launch a venture fund

“Rostelecom“plans to launch a venture fund worth several billion rubles. It may appear before the end of summer, a source who participated in consultations on its creation told Vedomosti. This information was confirmed by the source in the company. The operator intends to announce this in the near future at SPIEF, they specified.

The representative of Rostelecom refrained from official comments.

“The new fund is being created in addition to the CommIT Capital fund, which has already been operating since 2015 as an operator. It will differ from the current fund in focus,” a Vedomosti source in Rostelecom noted. The volume of this fund will be “several billion rubles,” he confirmed, without disclosing exact numbers.

CommIT Capital was created in the form of a business entity, says Ekaterina Zakharova, partner, head of venture practice at ASB Consulting Group. Maybe, “Rostelecom” wants to create a new fund in a different legal form that is more suitable for venture capital funds, she suggested. On the other hand, Zakharova continues, the new fund may have a different investment mandate: for example, to invest in projects at later stages, as a continuation of the existing portfolio. “Another reason may be to attract other investors to the new fund,” the expert added.

In early June, at the CIPR conference, Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin called for the creation of industry venture funds that should contribute to the development of the IT sector. The new Rostelecom fund is aimed at participating in this sectoral program for the development of the IT sector, one of Vedomosti’s sources added.

Attracting funds in the form of venture investments should replace grant support for the domestic industry of IT start-ups, Russian Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev said in April. He explained that grants cannot be enough to support the entire industry, so the state needs to develop the venture investment institution.

The size of the fund of several billion rubles is quite significant for Russian venture funds, experts told Vedomosti, commenting on the government’s initiative to support venture capital. The amount of 3 billion rubles. called “decent for the Russian fund” the founder of the analytical platform Dsight Arseniy Dabbah. According to him, over the past five years, venture funds with a volume of more than 2 billion rubles. less than ten were created on the Russian market. 3 billion rubles – “The typical size of a Russian venture fund, although due to inflation and the depreciation of the ruble, many teams are now trying to raise larger amounts,” emphasized Alexei Basov, managing partner of BSF Capital investment bank.

According to Zakharova, the fund’s volume of several billion rubles – about 5-6 billion rubles – is “basic for corporate funds”, such a volume makes it possible to realize the potential of the fund without losing the quality of the portfolio. But, according to her, a lot will depend on the investment strategy that she chooses “Rostelecom“.

Rostelecom’s new venture fund can invest not only in classical IT, but also in technological projects in various industries – in the agricultural sector, the space industry, telecom, – Andrey Taburinsky, the founder of the Daily challenge venture company, admits. “Several billion rubles is about $50 million. This is the minimum amount for a full-fledged fund that can carry out 10-15 transactions a year,” he estimated.