Romanian Startup Ecosystem Radar (12 – 23 December 2022)

Our new overview: Venture Capital funding in Romania

🤩 The overview on startup venture capital funding in Romania in 2022 is here: !! Check out our report on what was the total amount invested and what were the main trends on pre-seed and seed funding stages.

Venture capital, M&A and funding-related news

1. Startups in CEE can now benefit from the newest €500M fund of Speedinvest, a pan-European early-stage venture capital fund. The fund will continue to focus on pre-seed and seed European startups from six sectors: deep tech, fintech, health, industrial tech, marketplaces & consumer, and SaaS & infrastructure (link).

2. Teamlearning.ai, a platform that uses artificial intelligence both to create content and to analyze the performance of employees, received a funding of €100K from Mircea Căpățînă (SmartBill), Mihai Rotaru, (Clever Taxi and UrbanAir) and Accelerace, an investment fund from Denmark (link).

3. Bittnet announces the third M&A transaction of 2022, by signing the contract to take over 70% of the shares of Dataware Consulting SRL, integrator of IT&C products and services (link).

4. Growceanu, business angels platform, invests €80K in MedTech startup MediNav, in a round worth €250K. Lead investor is Overkill VC, with an investment of €170K (link).

5. Undelucram.ro, Romania’s largest employee community, is targeting €400K on SeedBlink to continue its regional expansion and development of AI technology. Total round is €1M, and GapMinder and Bulgaria’s Sofia Angels Ventures fund are among the investors (link).

7. Creative Tim company, specialized in the development of online themes and templates, invests in Play Vertical, a company founded by Romanian Alexandru Păduraru that offers creators the opportunity to make short, vertical videos (link).

8. The Romanian company Footprints for Retail, which operates one of the most advanced Retail Media platforms in the world, closes the first round of financing and attracts an investment of €500K. The round was led by Robin Good, a business acceleration and development company dedicated to tech start-ups in Romania (link).

Meme break – Happy Holidays!

News related to programs and events

9. InnovX-BCR announced the winning startups after the selection of 10 scaleups, dedicated to those companies with an already high level of business, but who want to develop on the local and international market (link).

10. On December 14th, I Love Failure hosted a special edition dedicated to ecommerce entrepreneurs who have discussed their failures and how they overcame them (link).

Various news related to startups

11. Manuscrito, the tablet app that helps kids improve their handwriting in an interactive way, is launching a test campaign. The startup is looking for 500 people to try out the app and provide feedback and suggestions to improve the product (link).

12. Tech startup Stailer, an online booking platform for beauty salons, launches Stailer Jobs, the platform that connects beauty industry professionals with the right salons (link).

13. Consulting services company PwC Romania has signed a strategic partnership with Romanian fintech Finqware to help financial departments optimize their internal processes using open banking technology (link).

14. The Romanian startup SPLASH Mobility added, at the end of this year, the ride-hailing service to its portfolio of alternative transport solutions, after 4 years on the scooter rental market. SPLASH thus becomes another player in this market, in addition to Uber or Bolt (link).

Other news in the ecosystem

15. Limitless Agency, one of the leading digital marketing companies in Romania, estimates a turnover of approximately €4M this year and plans to expand to the first foreign markets, in the USA and the UK, in 2023 (link).