Runa Capital pours €1.5m into Cloudpartner.de

Karin Wasteson
28 January 2014

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Runa Capital has invested €1.5m ($2m) in a series-A round for Berlin-based start-up Cloudpartner.de, which gives German SMEs access to cloud-based services.

The start-up caters to data safety concerns by letting German IT companies break the dominance of American cloud providers such as Microsoft, Google and Amazon, allowing them instead to be hosted within Germany. The Microsoft products it uses can be tailored specifically to the needs of German SMEs.

Since the first revelations in June 2013 over the US National Security Agency's (NSA) mass surveillance programme, there have been several private equity transactions in the data and IT security sector across Europe including BayBG's backing of B2B IT security solutions provider SSP Europe; Pinova Capital and BIP Investment Partners' buyout of B2B cyber-security provider Utimaco Safeware; and Project A Ventures' investment in ZenGuard.

Launched in July 2010 by Alexander Galitsky and Serguei Beloussov, the Moscow-based $135m venture capital fund Runa Capital offers around $30m in early-stage funding to Russian internet and software development companies, with a focus on cloud computing, machine learning, virtualisation, mobile and internet applications.

The fund is supported by Runapark, a business incubator that provides Russian start-ups with development support. Recent investments include Anturis, Rocketbank and Nginz. This financing round represents the firm's second investment in the German market.

Company
Cloudpartner.de gives German IT SMEs the opportunity to outsource their business into a secure Germany-based cloud rather than American cloud providers, using local data storage according to ISO 27001, and market this solution under their own brand name.

ISO 27001 is an information security management system (ISMS) that puts information security under explicit management control.

Cloudpartner.de was founded in 2013 by Markus Kempkes, Julien Ardisson, Tim Schütte and Ivo Slavov.

People
Serguei Beloussov is a co-owner of Runa Capital, with Andre Bliznyuk as a partner. Markus Kempkes is the CEO of Cloudpartner.de.