Private Equity Russia

American graphics card leader Nvidia signed a deal today with Russia’s Cognitive Technologies, a producer of image recognition and document handling software.

This is the first time that a major international IT corporation has signed such an open-ended cooperative deal with a Russian company, according to RBC. Ordinarily, it said,  firms would merely opt to license or purchase the intellectual property and continue its development abroad.

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Senior Partner of Russian private equity group Baring Vostok Capital Partners, Elena Ivashentseva, reportedly told attendees at The Russia Forum earlier this month that she doesn’t believe in the potential for venture capital investments in Russia’s technology sector on account of the poor state of education in the country.  She also reportedly said that there aren’t enough qualified managers capable of guiding businesses through their start-up phase.

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Russian Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin announced yesterday that the government is instituting new procurement policy to buy technology products that are innovative and made in Russia.

Russia’s state procurement budget is around $133 billion.  About $20 billion of this now goes to Russian technology companies.