After the fruitful November, December is even richer in great VC deals in Central & Eastern Europe with Estonia, Lithuania and Poland leading in the ranking of a number of closed rounds. Below, we present you 10 regional startups worth taking look at in the new year. Let’s have a glimpse!
Senuto
Location: Warsaw, Poland
Launch date: 2014
Funding Round: Seed €1.3M
Funding Source: ARIA Fund, Ataraxy Ventures Limited
Total funding received: €1.8M
Warsaw-based startup Senuto is definitely the one to follow this year. The marketing tool uses AI and Big Data technology to provide insights enabling SEO optimization of your webpage and marketing campaigns. The startup is proving its unique power with big clients on board, like Axcel Springer, onet.pl group and pracuj.pl, as well as over 11 000 professionals using the tool already. The seed investment of €1.3M by ARIA Fund and Ataraxy Ventures is the second equity investment into the startup, which in the first place had secured €480K from bValue in 2017 pre-seed round.
MeetFrank
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Launch date: 2017
Funding Round: Series A €1.5M
Funding Source: Karma Ventures, Change Ventures, ENERN Investments, Hummingbird Ventures
Total funding received: €2.5M
Meet MeetFrank and win the job offer of your dreams! The tool by Estonian startup enables users to connect with employers seeking new talents and those that are not even publicly searching for ones. All thanks to the MeetFrank app. The only thing the user needs to do is to create the personal profile that will later serve as a request sent by Frank to the profile matching companies - those advertising their newly opened positions and those not recruiting publicly. The process is anonymous, which means that the company is deciding on whether to contact an applicant based on his/her profile and at the same time allowing the user to assess the job options on the market, while still not risking a current position.
The recruitment app is already a well-known platform in Estonia and Finland. After the investment, it is aiming to scale to other European and Nordic countries. Among other well known VCs, Karma Ventures served as a leading investor of the December series A round.
Salv
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Launch date: 2018
Funding Round: Seed €1.8M
Funding Source: Fly Ventures, Seedcamp, Taavi Kotka, Passion Capital, Maximilian Tayenthal, Ott Kaukver
Total funding received: €1.8M
Salv, founded by TransferWise veterans, is a complex platform enabling potential money fraud detection. To meet the customers’ specific needs, the tool can be personalised, still maintaining the easy to use and implement character, with minimum IT knowledge required. The closed seed round of Salv was led by Berlin-based Fly Ventures with big names of startup world on board such as Maximilian Tayenthal - founder of N26 and former Twilio CTO Ott Kaukver.
SmartHotel
Location: Warszawa, Poland
Launch date: 2019
Funding Round: Pre-seed €460K
Funding Source: Smok Ventures
Total funding received: €460K
Backed by Smok Ventures, SmartHotel introduced a smart communication tool for hotel guests. The messenger chatbots and smart TV technology integrated with the hotel’s management systems allow the effective information flow between the guests and hotel reception. Since day one the startup’s aspiration is to go global and scale on the European and African market.
GOSU Data Lab
Location: Vilnius, Lithuania
Launch date: 2017
Funding Round: Series B €2.5M
Funding Source: Brighteye Ventures, Gagarin Capital Partners, Ventech, Runa Capital, Toivo Annus, Sistema VC
Total funding received: €4.6M
GOSU Data Lab develops machine learning and AI-based game tech solutions for competitive gamers. So far, the startup has released an AI assistant for Dota2 and PUBG, as well as the first voice assistant coaching the gamers of League of Legends. Originally established in Moscow, GOSU founders have moved its main office to Lithuania, aiming to extend the dev team with local highly educated data scientists. Among the well known international venture capital funds financing the series B investment of €2.5M were American Runa Capital and French & Chinese Ventech together with 3 other VCs and 1 private investor.
Cleanbeat
Location: Tallinn, Estonia
Launch date: 2016
Funding Round: Seed €1.1M
Funding Source: Mistletoe, Ragnar Sass, Martin Henk
Total funding received: €1.1M
Cleanbeat is another worth looking at project, established in one of the most startup active country of the region - Estonia. It is onboarding and skills development tool supported by a community that helps HR departments/tutors not only to introduce newcomers to the new environment but also enables self-growth support and personal development of self-driven individuals. All of that is based on complex analysis and predictions of user-generated data.
The pocketing of €1.1M seed investment from Mistletoe, Ragnar Sass and Martin Henk will allow the startup to scale globally and engage schools from around the world. For now, the Estonian market is a great base camp to start, as it holds the position of the European leader in education.
Straal
Location: Warszawa, Poland
Launch date: 2016
Funding Round: Seed €1M
Funding Source: private investors
Total funding received: €1M
Straal obtained €1M from polish private investors specialising in capital markets and e-commerce. At the moment, the startup holds talks with prospective investors on further equity investments of series A. The Warsaw-based Straal delivers complex payment solutions for digital business, among others smart payment gateway, anti fraud system and tool for transactions optimization. The team behind the advanced FinTech product consists of top-level managers with an international background and experience gained in top-tier global corporations (i.e. BCG, PayU, Barclays).
MedLease
Location: Sofia, Bulgaria
Launch date: 2016
Funding Round: Debt financing €400K
Funding Source: European Investment Fund
Total funding received: €600K
MedLease is a Bulgarian FinTech specialised in loan service for patients. The goal of the venture is to provide flexible and inexpensive financing for medical service. The process is fast, the funds are transferred directly from MedLease to the clinic of the choice and the only costs are interests from the contract (no collateral needed). 80% of the MedLease loan portfolio is spent on specialised med loans, the remaining 20% on consumer loans. MedLease is fully supported by debt financing from the European Investment Fund.
Medicai
Location: Bucharest, Romania
Launch date: 2019
Funding Round: Seed €500K
Funding Source: Sacha Dragic (D Moonshots), Gapminder VC, Roca X
Total funding received: €500K
The Romanian MedTech - Medicai - delivers a digital healthcare tool for doctors and patients collaboration. It enables cooperation of interdisciplinary teams of medical specialists to provide the in-depth outcome of MRI, CT and PET-CT test results for patients. Simply saying, the platform allows close-knit communication and collaboration between the doctors, unlimited access to a patient’s history, storage space for saving the imaging test results and direct information flow between the doctors and patients. In the future, the innovation of that kind will be able to facilitate smart hospitals infrastructure and increase the effectiveness of common medical testing processes. With €500K seed round, the startup is focusing, among others, on the further development of doctor’s support AI technology. With over 150 medical specialists on board already, the startup proves that there is a demand for its solution.
Mobiform
Location: Odessa, Ukraine
Launch date: 2018
Funding Round: Seed €180K
Funding Source: N/D
Total funding received: €180K
First on the list Ukrainian-based venture - Mobiform is an e-commerce platform for individually personalised kitchen furniture. The user has a choice of numerous design options displayed in the catalogue, which he or she can, adjust depending on their preferences (colour, size or design change possible). This way, a consumer can design the kitchen without leaving the house. The seed round of €180K, closed in December, was the first equity financing collected by the startup. Mobiform has not disclosed information about the seed investors, who took part in the deal.
These are the chosen 10 startups from Central & Eastern Europe that successfully closed funding rounds in December 2019.
Related Posts:
10 TOP CEE Funding Rounds Closed In November 2019 (by Anna Kazmierczak, Analyst, Next Road Ventures)
10 TOP CEE Funding Rounds Closed In January 2020 (by Anna Kazmierczak, Analyst, Next Road Ventures)
10 TOP CEE Funding Rounds Closed In February 2020 (by Anna Kazmierczak, Analyst, Next Road Ventures)
