Venture capital, M&A and funding-related news

1. Finqware, a fintech startup specializing in integration and open banking applications, is raising a total of €450K in a bridge round led by 7X Partners to fully automate corporate financial operations in Europe. The fintech is also listed on SeedBlink to get €200K (link). 

2. The TechAngels Group invested €3.3M for the development of local startups in the first half of 2022. The amount represents a 10% increase in investments made in the first half of last year (link).

3. Extasy, a platform that offers leisure experiences and which has been launched by Bogdan Buta, founder of UNTOLD, and Sveatoslav Vizitiu, co-founder of the health platform for children and parents, Wello, attracts new funding of €700K from 9 investors (link).

4. Fortech Investments is investing in the medical start-up UpLyft, whose product allows patients with reduced mobility to move out of bed on their own in a wheelchair in less than a minute (link).

5. A group of Romanian and English investors invested €50K through the business angels platform Growceanu in T-DAB.AI, a British deep tech company, in a round worth €600K. The other funders are private investors from the UK (link).

Meme break – let’s not take ourselves too serious 

 News related to programs and events

6. Rubik Garage, an accelerator for startups at the beginning of the road organized by Rubik Hub, attracted the attention of 120 founders who signed up for the program. Out of these, 22 startups have been accepted to the program, where the founders will participate in over 60 hours of practical workshops with experts and feedback sessions with mentors and investors (link). 

7. Acceleration program StepFWD, in partnership with Google for Startups, Orange and Algolia, aims to launch in September 2022 the first report on the impact of diverse teams on the business environment and how diversity greatly influences the ecosystem. In order to help them, you can complete their survey here (link).

8. Startups, spin-offs and SMEs in Romania that have functional solutions can join the ChallengeEIT program with solutions that meet one of the four health challenges, having the chance to obtain financial and human support to test its solution on the market. The registrations are open until August 15 (link).

9. INNO, a department of the North-West Regional Development Agency, is launching in August StartUp LevelUP, an educational program that aims to initiate those who wish to enter the world of entrepreneurship. The program is organized in levels, with different themes and activities, which help the participants to develop, regardless of their stage (link).

 Various news related to startups

10. Wizrom Software, one of the most important developers and integrators of business software in Romania, announces the conclusion of a partnership on the integration of the Postis digital platform in its own ERP system, to offer its customers access to a complete online order management and delivery system of B2B distribution (link).

11. OCTAVIC, a provider of digital solutions for Industry 5.0, has listed the first robot to automate factory repetitive processes on the UiPath Marketplace. This technology transforms conventional factories into smart units, by streamlining production processes (link).

12. The Romanian Post has entered into a partnership with Finqware, a Romanian fintech company, in order to streamline its financial activity and digitize the institution’s internal processes (link).

13. NETOPIA Payments has partnered with VTEX, the digital commerce enterprise platform with which brands and retailers manage their commerce operations, to offer platform merchants more payment methods (link).

14. The Romanian startup BeeFast launches BeeFast SaaS – a software as a service solution that helps businesses manage their last-mile deliveries in real time, inside cities (link).

15. The Romanian health platform SanoPass launches the medical telemedicine platform MedicU, which is available in the extra-salary benefit packages provided by Edenred (link).

Another one 

 Other news in the ecosystem

16. The Tazz platform extends its summer delivery services to the beaches and accommodations in Mamaia resort, but also to the beaches of Constanța (link). 

17. eMAG continues the leadership development program with a new investment of €200K. Grow Talent, the program developed by eMAG for the development of internal leaders, gives participants access to business programs developed by prestigious universities such as Harvard Business School and MIT Management Executive Education (link).

18. The European digital investment platform Bitpanda has expanded its offer of Bitpanda Crypto Indices by launching new thematic crypto indices, for all those interested in investing in different segments of the crypto space (link).

19. Lemon.io, a Ukrainian startup that functions as a job marketplace for independent programmers, has launched on the Romanian market and is looking to recruit more than 100 IT specialists from the local market (link).

20. Glovo enters into a strategic partnership with Carrefour hypermarkets and offers users the opportunity to order from 20,000 products sold by the French retailer (link).

21. Banca Transilvania opened in Bucharest the Stup, a physical and virtual space, dedicated to supporting the entrepreneurial community. They have created the necessary infrastructure to connect entrepreneurs with service and product providers for setting up, running, managing a business (link).

Cheers

from Andrea, Denisa, Adrian, Ela and Mircea (Activize team)