Cisco became the anchor investor in a venture capital fund that will be focusing on tech startups in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The fund, Almaz Capital Partners, has been initially stocked with $60 million. Notes the economics blog paidContent.org, this certainly isn’t Cisco’s first investment in Russia. In April, 2007, it joined Index Ventures which in turned funded etailer Ozon to the tune of $18 million. Cisco says it is eyeing eastern Europe for its anticipated fast growh, particularly in Internet ventures, but also telecom and media. Cisco currently has put more than $2 billion in venture capital investments to work including equity investments in markets such as China, India, Israel and Europe and the U.S, it says.
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Jim Duffy has been covering technology for over 28 years, 23 at Network World. He covers enterprise networking infrastructure, including routers and switches. He also writes The Cisco Connection blog and can be reached on Twitter @Jim_Duffy and at jduffy@nww.com.Google+
