Alternative search startup Quintura Inc. has secured a Series A round of nearly $5 million from Mangrove Capital Partners, to scale up and build out its meaning-based search engine. The financing follows a seed round announced in November that included Luxembourg-based Mangrove, as well as
Russia’s ABRT Venture Fund and
Boston’s OpenView Venture Partners. The platform was developed by several Russian technologists and aims to make search more intuitive. An entered search term returns an interactive cloud of related keywords and phrases. The
Alexandria, Va. incorporated company says it is the first to embed icons in the search cloud. Quintura’s revenue model is based on selling graphical advertising — images, logos, and icons — within the search cloud and the company is working on an affiliate model for Web sites and blogs to replace a site map. Quintura has a search engine for children that delivers results with kids-related content and plans to soon launch one for females linking to women’s interest sites. The news comes as
Russia’s VC market is heating up. In a recent later stage round,
Ozon.ru, Russia's answer to Amazon.com Inc.,
announced in April an $18 million round from Index Ventures, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Cisco Systems Inc. — Cisco’s first, and certainly not its last, foray into the market.
—Carolyn Murphy
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