Mail.ru Group, which complteted $1 billion IPO in London in November 2010, has exercised its option to acquire an additional 7.44% equity stake in VKontakte for $111.7 million. As a result, Mail.ru Group increased its equity stake in VKontakte to 39.99%, the company announced.

The acquisition implies Vkontakte valuation of $1.5 billion.

Russia’s largest social network Vkontakte, which generates monthly revenues of over $10 million, mulled IPO plans last month. Launched in late 2006, Vkontakte has over 140 million registered users, of which 25.5 million visit Vkontakte daily, according to its website.

Russian-American founder Stepan Pachikov‘s digital note service provider Evernote has already raised over $36.5 million from Sequoia, Morgenthaler, DOCOMO Capital and Troika Dialog of Russia. Today, Evernote announced that it raised a new funding – $50 million from Sequoia Capital and Morgenthaler Ventures to expand its offerings by an aggressive growth and acquisition strategy.

Launched in June 2008, Evernote has 11 million registered users. More than 4% of users pay monthly or annually for premium features. Evernote is available on PC, Mac and mobile platforms (iOS, Android, etc). Evernote is headed by CEO Phil Libin.

Morgenthaler Ventures‘ partner Ken Gullicksen joined Evernote to lead its corporate development and acquisition strategy.

The Russian contextual advertising market was valued at more than 12 billion Roubles (ca. $430 million) in the first half of 2011. The market has increased 60% year-on-year.

The leading Russian search engine company Yandex, which completed $1.4 billion IPO on NASDAQ in May 2011, holds 65% share of the Russian contextual advertising market. Yandex‘ contextual advertising spendings accounted for 7.96 billion Roubles (ca. $284 million) in H1 2011, according to a research by iContext. Yandex search market share in Russia is also equal to 65%.

Google holds 26% share of the Russian contextual advertising market. Google‘ contextual advertising spendings accounted for 3.13 billion Roubles (ca. $112 million) in H1 2011. Google, which opened the Russian office in 2005, shall book annual revenues of over $200 million in Russia.

Begun holds 7% share of the Russian contextual advertising market. Begun‘ contextual advertising spendings accounted for 880 million Roubles (ca. $31 million) in H1 2011. For the first time, Begun market share dropped below 10%. Its major executive officers departed for Mail.ru in April 2011.

The leading Baltics private equity and venture capital firm, BaltCap manages venture capital funds dedicated to investing in small and medium-sized businesses in Latvia and Lithuania under the JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises) initiative.

The Riga, Latvia-based vendor of HRB human resources management software, AGroup has raised EUR 1.5 million funding from Latvia Venture Capital Fund of BaltCap.

AGroup was formed in 2008 as a spin-off from Latvian office of Robertson & Blums Corporation. AGroup has over 550 customers of its HRB solutions in 22 countries in Eastern Europe. The first HRB payroll solution was developed in 1998. HRB integrates with major ERP solutions such as Oracle, SAP, Sun and Microsoft Dynamics NAV. HRB solution, which offers such HR functionality as payroll calculation and work time recording, will include talent management, recruiting management and personnel evaluation in the new versions of software.

AGroup CEO is Russian Alexander Snurnitsyn who headed outsourcing software development services at Mirantis in Moscow in 2000s.

When Naspers‘ company MIH Allegro acquired a 71% stake in 3 years-old Turkish e-commerce group Markafoni last week, valuing it at some $200 million, the biggest gainers on the sale happened to be Markafoni‘s venture capital investors Trayas Investments of Klaus Hommels and Oliver Jung. They also invested in the largest Russian online shopping club KupiVIP.ru and Indian shopping club FashionandYou.

Founded in 2008, Markafoni (VİPİNDİRİM A.Ş.) online shopping club has over 3.5 million registered members in Turkey. Markafoni also operates in Ukraine (modnakasta.ua) and Greece (brandsgalaxy.gr). In addition to online shopping club, Markafoni has a group buying/couponing site Grupfoni and online shoe store Zizigo.

Markafoni was founded by Sina Afra (CEO), Tolga Tatari (CTO) and Ahmet Sari (CFO). In March 2010, Markafoni raised $7.2 million (11 million Turkish Lira). Markafoni’s sales were estimated at $40 million in 2010.

In May 2010, Naspers and Trayas invested $15 million and $2 million respectively in Brazilian shopping club Brandsclub.

In August 2010, Naspers acquired 68% of online classifieds business OLX for $144 million.

How much does a Russian online travel startup need to raise in order to win against competitors? First, HipClub.ru has got a few hundred thousand from business angels. Second, Anywayanyday obtained $5 million from Tiger Global. Then, Oktogo.ru received $5 million from Mangrove and Ventech. Recently, Travelmenu got $1.4 million from Almaz Capital and Runa Capital. So, the answer shall be that to win the market a Russian online travel agency needs to raise more than a total of what all your competitors did before.

Accel Partners and General Catalyst have led $13.6 million round in Russian online travel agency Ostrovok.ru. The other investors in the round included Peter Thiel, Mark Pincus, and Esther Dyson who tweeted about a deal. Niklas Zennstrom (Skype) and his firm Atomico as well as Fritz Demopoulos (Qunar) also invested in Ostrovok.ru.

The $13.6 million Series A investment and $2 million previous investment from business angels in 2010 valued Ostrovok.ru at $35.6 million post-money, implying a 44% equity stake for the investors.

Ostrovok.ru (Островок.ру in Russian) was founded by Kirill Makharinsky and Serge Faguet in 2010. The Booking.com-style Ostrovok.ru launched hotel booking service on July 12, 2011.

Russia’s ZeptoLab-developed casual game Cut the Rope was first released for iPhone in October 2010. Since release, the game racked 45 million downloads, including 9 million paid downloads, according to newspaper Vedomosti. The iOS version of Cut the Rope is published by Chillingo. The game won Apple Design Award 2011.

Kite Ventures of Edward Shederovich has invested in ZeptoLab. Kite Ventures is known for its investments in coupon site Darberry (now Groupon Russia) and game information Kanobu Network (acquired by Afisha Rambler).

Released in June 2011, the Android version of Cut the Rope has become #1 paid new app at Android Market. ZeptoLab publishes Android version of Cut the Rope.

Founded in 2008, ZeptoLab is run by Moscow-based brothers Semyon Voinov and Efim Voinov. Prior to founding ZeptoLab together with his brother, Semyon Voinov worked as Lead Artist at game publisher Digital Chocolate in Helsinki, Finland.

ZeptoLab seems to be closely following Rovio of Finland whose casual game Angry Birds for iOS was first published by Chillingo. When Angry Birds became very popular, Rovio parted ways with Chillingo and began publishing the new versions of the game itself.

ZeptoLab should get some 30% revenue share from paid downloads of its game at iTunes App Store (30% share is taken by Apple and 40% – by Chillingo). In comparison,  ZeptoLab should get some 71% revenue share from paid downloads at Android Market where 29% share is taken by Google. The paid version of the game retails at $0.99.

ZeptoLab should have generated net revenues of some $3 million to date from sales of Cut the Rope.

Russian Yuri Milner‘s firm DST Global, which recently raised $1 billion for DST Global 2, is leading $400 million Series E round in Twitter. The new investment will value Twitter at $8 billion, implying a 5% equity stake for investors of this round, according to newspaper Kommersant. Previous investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), which led previous $200 million Series D round in Twitter in December 2010, join the new investment.

Founded in 2006, Twitter has over 200 million registered accounts. Being a micro-blogging service, Twitter has become a media phenomenon where both individual users and publishers report real-time news. The users of Twitter send over 200 million Tweets (short messages) per day. Twitter is expected to generate revenues of $200 million in 2011.

Russia’s largest search engine and contextual advertising company, Yandex, which completed $1.4 billion IPO on NASDAQ in May 2011, has invested in Refine.io.  The investment was made as part of Yandex.Factory (Яндекс.Фабрика) initiative, according to Yandex start-up blog. The size of investment is in the range of 50 thousand dollars.

Founded in 2011, Refine.io offers mobile apps prototype creation service. Based California, Refine.io has software development in Ukraine.

Yandex start-up investment program Yandex.Factory makes investments in seed and early-stage internet and mobile start-ups in the range several hundred thousand dollars. Yandex recently invested in personal finance startup Zenmoney.ru. Yandex acquired two Russian start-ups such as web login service Loginza and website analytics service WebVizor. Each deal was in the range of few hundred thousand dollars.

In 2010, Yandex invested $3 million in facial recognition company Face.com from  Israel.

The major Formula One teams such as McLaren Mercedes and Scuderia Ferrari, which are now #2 and #3 in F1 Constructor Standings, will be in Moscow soon.

The F1 teams will be participating in Moscow City Racing on July 17, 2011.

It’ll be the first time ever when Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team will be coming to Moscow. The visit will happen thanks to the leading Russian software company, Kaspersky Lab, which is one of the sponsors of Scuderia Ferrari F1 Team.

The easiest way to book hotels for Moscow City Racing is on Oktogo.ru. Focused on Russian domestic travel, Oktogo.ru offers online hotel reservation. Oktogo is funded by Ventech, Mangrove, ABRT and angel investors.

The united company of Afisha and Rambler, which recently re-branded itself and launched Rambler-Fund for online start-ups, has agreed to acquire a majority stake in the Russian online gaming information net Kanobu Network operator Online Media from Kite Ventures of Edward Shenderovich and Kanobu founder Gadgi Makhtiev, announced Rambler.  The deal could be valued at $3.5 million, according to newspaper Vedomosti. Gadgi Makhtiev remained a minority shareholder at Kanobu (Online Media)

Founded in 2008, Kanobu Network operating company Online Media attracts a total of more than 3 million unique monthly users at Kanobu.ru, OGL.ru and GamesLife.ru. Kanobu Network‘s annual revenues, which come mostly from advertising, are estimated at $1 million.

Combining web-sites of Kanobu Network with Rambler‘s own gaming destination site games.rambler.ru with 1 million monthly visitors, Rambler will have more than 4 million unique monthly visitors for online gaming and become a top 3 online gaming destination in Russia.

When it comes to exploring some of the best VC deals, it’s not only about Russia and Africa. The leading European early-stage venture capital firm Mangrove Capital Partners has made an investment in e-commerce in India. Mangrove Capital funded Indian online shoe store Bestylish. The investment should be in the range of several million dollars.

BeStylish.com was launched by Smile Interactive Group of Harish Bahl from India in 2011. Smile runs online shopping club FashionAndYou.com and group buying portal DealsAndYou.com, of which Mangrove Capital is also an investor. BeStylish is run by CEO Shailen Amin.

In June 2011, Intel Capital led $12 million investment round in Russian online shoe store Sapato.ru, which is also funded by German Otto Group-backed eVenture Capital Partners, Investment AB Kinnevik of Sweden and Direct Group (via Fast Lane Ventures) of Pascal Clement.

Sapato.ru competes with Lamoda.ru, Russian online shoe store funded by Rocket Internet of Samwer brothers,Tengelmann Group of Germany, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Investment AB Kinnevik.

In 2011, Mangrove Capital sold German online shopping club brands4friends to eBay and Australian couponing service Spreets to Yahoo!. In Russia, Mangrove Capital is a major investor in online shopping club KupiVIP.ru, which completed $55 million round from Bessemer, Balderton and Russia Partners (Siguler Guff) in April 2011.

In June 2010, Group Buying Global AG and Smile Interactive Group of Harish Bahl from India acquired Indian group buying portal WanaMo.com. WanaMo has been rebranded as DealsAndYou. Mangrove Capital invested in DealsAndYou.

India’s leading online group buying portal DealsAndYou.com features a daily deal on the best stuff to do, see, eat, and buy in some of India’s leading cities. It is headquartered in Gurgaon and is part of Group Buying Global AG.

Its sister site, Indian online shopping club, Fashion and You (FashionandYou.com) is the leading fashion, luxury and style site in India. It is a top 10 online multi-brand retailer in the country. Fashion & You raised $8 million from Sequoia Capital India in December 2010.

The major Indian group buying and daily deals sites include Mydala.com, SnapDeal.com and Taggle.com.

The largest Russian social network Vkontakte is in early talks with investment banks regarding IPO in New York in 2012, according to Bloomberg news.

Launched in late 2006, Vkontakte reported revenues of $94 million in 2010. VKontakte revenues is expected to increase more than 30% to over $120 million in 2011. Vkontakte‘s monthly audience reached 23.5 million in April 2011, according to TNS Web Index. Vkontakte.ru has some 139 million registered users, of which more than 25 million visit Vkontakte daily, according to its website. VKontakte can also be used via VK.com.

Mail.ru Group, which owns a 32.5% stake in Vkontakte (“В Контакте” in Russian), valued Vkontakte at $1.5 billion in November 2010 when Mail.ru acquired an additional 7.5% stake in VKontakte for $112.5 million.

Russia’s leading search engine and contextual advertising company, Yandex raised over $1.3 billion at IPO on NASDAQ in May 2011.

The leading Russian online portal Rambler has implemented Yandex Search on Rambler.ru. The search services on Rambler are powered by Yandex search engine and Rambler displays ads from Yandex.Direct (Яндекс.Директ), Yandex Advertising Network, according to it.

According to our calculations, Yandex should add between $10 million and $20 million, or less than 5% to its forecasted revenues of above $600 million in 2011 from partnership with Rambler.

As of today, Yandex.Direct contextual search advertisements are displayed above and below search results on Rambler. The contextual search advertisments and media banner advertisiments from Begun, which is 50.1% owned by Rambler, are displayed to the right from search results on Rambler.

Being one of the pioneers of the Russian internet search market in late 1990s and early 2000s, Rambler has finally given up on search. Rambler search market share in Russia has decreased to just 1.5% vs. Yandex‘s search share of 65%. Rambler‘s search audience totals some 4 million users vs. Yandex‘s monthly audience of 40 million users.

The Russian nanotechnilogy investment company RUSNANO has agreed to invest up to $125 million out of $250 million in a U.S. – Russia technology transfer fund to be managed by Harris & Harris Group, according to RUSNANO announcement.

Harris & Harris Group is a publicly traded venture capital firm exclusively focused on investing in companies enabled by nanotechnology and microsystems.

Harris & Harris Group‘s Executive Vice President and Managing Director is Alexei Andreev from Russia who used to work at DFJ and Renaissance Capital Group/Sputnik Funds in Moscow, Russia. Previously, Alexei Andreev was a researcher at the Centre of Nanotechnology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Troitsk, Russia.

RUSNANO has also agreed to invest $200 million in Burrill Capital Fund IV.

Burrill Life Science Capital Fund IV, a new $500 million life sciences investment fund to be managed by Burrill & Company, will get a $200 million capital investment from the Russian nanotechnology investment company RUSNANO. This is the largest equity capital investment commitment by a Russian company in a U.S. private equity fund.

San Francisco-based Burrill & Company is a life sciences merchant bank focused exclusively on companies involved in biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, diagnostics, devices, human healthcare and related medical technologies, nutraceuticals and wellness, agricultural biotechnology, and industrial biotechnology (biomaterials and bioprocesses).

Burrill Life Sciences Capital Fund III, of which Burrill & Company is the general partner, was capitalized at $283 million in 2006.

RUSNANO recently invested in ItN Nanovation of Germany and Crocus Technology of France.

Initially funded by ABRT Fund and Mangrove Capital Partners, social games developer Drimmi has released its first iOS game SnowBall Duel HD. With its social games installed by over 15 million users, Drimmi shall aim for a major venture capital financing in 2011.

Launched in late 2009, social games company Drimmi released its social games in Russian social networks Odnoklassniki.ru, Vkontakte, Moi Mir (MyWorld@Mail.ru) and others. Drimmi was founded by Nikita Sherman.

Drimmi released seven game titles such as Fish Place (Рыбное Место), Monkeys (Обезьянки), Poker Quest (Покер Квест), Happy Doctor (Веселый Доктор), Magic Country (Волшебная Страна), ShowBiz (ШоуБиз) and SnowBall Duel.

Drimmi‘s most popular game Fish Place is being played in such European social networks as VZ (called Fischerei) in Germany, Netlog in Belgium, Nasza Klasa (NK) in Poland, Draugiem in Latvia and Rate in Estonia.

The Russian social games publisher Pixonic recently raised $5 million from Ventech.

After NASDAQ-listed Yandex launched its Yandex.Factory start-up investment initiative in early 2011, the other major Russian online companies such as London-listed Mail.ru Group and ProfMedia-owned Rambler aimed to respond. The united company of Afisha and Rambler has launched its own start-up investment program called Rambler-Fund.

Rambler-Fund (Рамблер-Фонд) plans to invest up to $100,000 (3 million Russian Roubles) in online start-ups for a time period of between 6 months and 1 year. The start-up has to have a business plan and prototype.

Rambler-Fund will seek to invest in start-ups in online media, online shopping, personal communications, and online business solutions.

The Russian online start-ups will now have another funding source after ABRT Fund, Runa Capital and  Russian Venture Company‘s seed fund.

VC turned entrepreneur Andres Susi online dating startup Flirtic raised a round of venture capital funding from Almaz Capital/Cisco Russia Fund I, the company announced today. The Estonian investor Allan Martinson funded Firtic also nominated Myspace Senior Vice President April Henry as its board member. The new investment should be in the range of $1 million.

Launched in early 2011, Flirtic.com makes it easy to meet, have fun and flirt with new people. Flirtic aims to make dating fun by giving its users the ability to express themselves and find their perfect match. Flirtic offers messaging, wall posts, likes and fun games. Flirtic shareholders include Andrei Korobeinik and Evgeny Pshenichnikov, founders of Rate Solutions, MTVP and angel investor Jaak Roosipuu.

Allan Martinson MTVP has had a few noitceable exits including sale of Reksoft to Technoserv in 2008.