Kremlin and Chubais present Russia’s nanotechnologies to top Silicon Valley venture capitalism titans
MOSCOW, Russia - After Kremlin, Anatoly Chubais, the CEO of the state-owned Nanotechnologies Corp. (Rosnano), also hosted the high-profile delegation of CEOs of U.S. leading venture funds, including some of the Silicon Valley venture bulwarks that manage assets worth billions of dollars, and briefed them about Rosnano’s plans, such as its scheduled conversion into a joint stock entity in 2011 and possible IPO in 2013-14 and the ambitious plans to transform nanotechnologies into a $30bln industry by 2015.
The delegation included leaders from such well-known funds as Accel Partners, August Capital, Atlas Venture, Bessemer Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, Sofinnova Ventures, JK&B Capital, Emergence Capital, Mohr Davidow Ventures, Domain Associates, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, Asset Management Company, Alloy Ventures, EDventure, Siguler Guff & Company, Index Ventures, Almaz Capital Partners, Draper, Fisher & Jurvetson, Trident Capital and Wellington Partners that jointly have $60bln of assets under their management. According to American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR), the aggregate investment portfolio of these companies includes over 6,000 brands, including such famous names as Microsoft, Oracle, Dell, Cisco, Intuit, Symantec, Apple, Redhat, Juniper, Facebook, Ebay, Hotmail, Baidu, Skype, Verisign, Veritas, Gartner Group, Teva, Amgen, Applied Biosystems, Biogen, Idec, etc.
The meeting was a part of the U.S. venture business leaders’ visit, organized by Rosnano and the AmBAR, with the goal of acquainting the visitors with Russia’s innovations and the role that venture capital could play in their realizations. The establishment and expansion of cooperation with foreign venture investors have always been one of Russian innovative companies’ priorities, therefore, several projects, including those under execution and those in their early stages of development, were presented to the U.S. venture titans.
The Rosnano meeting followed a top-level reception of the venture capitalism titans in the Kremlin by President Dmitry Medvedev, a strong advocate for a full-scale modernization of the Russian society, from economy to an e-government, including full automation of the public services systems. Specifically, Medvedev invited ‘the venture capitalists’ to take a full advantage of Russia’s more liberal business climate, compared with the crisis-induced tougher business legislations in other countries, and actively invest in Russia’s innovative projects. “We, certainly, shall promote the development of such businesses in Russia.”
Commenting on the meeting, Chubais called it a historic event, noting that his main task going forward is to crown the ongoing dialog with the venture capitalists with concrete large projects. “Already, there is mutual understanding, which should eventually lead to inflow of investments to Russia. These will, indeed, be the so-called ‘smart’ large-scale capital, which can be understood as strategic investments into innovative projects such as pharmaceuticals and solar energy, etc.”
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