2019 in Eastern Europe: Russia moves towards digital isolation, neighboring countries export IT services and gifted entrepreneursCrunchbase and East-West Digital News are teaming up to cover key tech and venture trends from Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Tech stars of the yearMail.ru Group and Yandex, Russia’s largest Internet companies, as well as Sberbank, the state-owned financial institution turning into a tech giant, made the headlines in 2019.

It has become a tentacular tech group well beyond financial services.

Its taxi-hailing subsidiary Yandex.Taxi – which merged activities in Russia with Uber in 2018 – turned profitable in 2019.

Yandex.Taxi made a series of acquisitions in 2018 and 2019 to strengthen its leadership across Russian regions. | To read full story, visit https://startuparound.com/read/1579305606.7832031/2019-in-Eastern-Europe?ref=audio_experience