Russian venture capital is becoming more selective: results of the Dsight study “Venture Eurasia, H1 2025”
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published
The report on the Russian venture capital market by Dsight, prepared with the support of B1, Gazprombank, and the Moscow Venture Fund, was presented. The event featured KAMA FLOW partner Evgeny Borisov as a speaker in the panel discussion "From Government Orders to the Market: New Rules for Startups".
- According to analysts, in the first half of 2025, investment in Russian technology companies grew by 86% — from $46 million to $78 million.
- At the same time, the number of deals decreased by 27% (from 74 to 54), while the average ticket size more than doubled, reaching $1.4 million.
- Investors increasingly focused on more mature-stage projects, so both the number of seed-stage deals and investment volume decreased: analysts recorded 22 deals with a total volume of $5 million at this stage.
- This is partly due to the fact that business angels significantly reduced their activity in the first half of the year: their share of total investment volume dropped from 48% to 7%.
What does this mean for the market?
The market is becoming more mature: capital is concentrating in fewer deals with larger checks, largely thanks to government support. Development institutions and large funds are providing long-term funding where private investors are reducing their activity.
"In 2022–2023, with a major shortage of early-stage funds, this gap was partially filled by business angels, who invested actively both as private individuals and within syndicates. After the key interest rate was increased, most capital was redirected into fixed income instruments—such as deposits and bonds—which offered fairly attractive returns. It was difficult for alternative investments like venture capital or private equity to compete with those rates. Lately, we've seen a significant slowdown in private investor activity, but we believe that if the interest rate goes down, activity will revive—particularly through investment platforms and instruments such as closed mutual funds (ZPIFs) managed by various companies. So, we expect that private investor participation in direct and venture investment markets (as well as in the stock market, for that matter) will remain significant," explains Evgeny Borisov.
Furthermore, for the further development of the market, at a time when government contracts are a key driver of demand, one of the critical factors for success is building a balance between state participation and market mechanisms. According to Evgeny, state programs—such as R&D subsidies, tax incentives, and late-stage funds—should work in alignment with market benchmarks. If this balance is maintained, everyone benefits: the state sees the development of critical sectors, investors get robust projects, and startups gain the opportunity to move from the lab to real market conditions.