Romanian Startup Ecosystem Radar (27 June – 10 July 2022)

🔭 From our Side

Two articles of overview from our side:

1. Overview on startups-related programs and events in Romania (January – June 2022)

2. Overview on startup venture capital funding in Romania (January – June 2022)

💸 Venture capital, M&A and funding-related news

1. SeedBlink, the European co-investment platform in tech startups, launches a secondary market where investors can trade with each other the assets they hold, increasing the chances of returns from portfolio investments (link).

2. Simtel Team, a Romanian engineering and technology company listed on the AeRO market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange, announces the closing of the share capital increase operation. The company raised a total of RON 12.8M from investors. The capital will be used to further develop the company’s business lines (link).

3. InstantSpace announces the launch of the fast space reservation platform for events and related services. The company also attracted a new round of financing, worth a total of €500K, led by EGV, with the participation of Sparking Capital and foreign business angels (link).

4. Investor Bogdan Iordache has launched Underline Ventures, a solo GP venture fund targeting early-stage high-growth Eastern European startups with global ambitions, thus joining the ranks of solo VC managers emerging in Europe. Underline Ventures’ debut fund has raised €10M, with a final target of €20M (link).

5. Proptech startup Milluu has raised a late seed round of up to €1M and is supported by CoFounder Zone in Poland, a group of Romanian venture capital funds (such as EGV, Roca X, Growceanu, Simple Capital, Netopia Ventures) and business angels. The startup will use the funds to continue the expansion in new cities in Romania and Poland and to develop the product (link).

6. Glow2Go, the first home beauty services platform in Romania, attracted a pre-seed investment of €192K,  part of the funding coming from a group of business angels from the Bravva community, coordinated by Ilinca Păun (link).

7. Value4Capital, the lower mid-market Polish and central European buy-out manager, has announced the completion of an investment in Silkweb S.A., the Romanian company operating the gomag.ro platform. The platform provides a complete e-commerce ecosystem by offering e-commerce stores, marketplace integrations and a variety of other integrations and services, predominantly under a software as a service model (link). 

😅 Meme break – let’s not take ourselves too serious 

ser-meme.jpg

🗞️ News related to programs and events

8. The team behind the Commons Accel acceleration program launches ADRVest Accel and invites startup founders in the western part of the country to sign up to validate and grow their business. The program is free, and the registrations have started (link).

9. AgriTech Camp, the first precision agriculture camp dedicated to high school students and teachers in agricultural high schools in Romania, organized by the E-Civis Association, took place between June 30 and July 3 (link).

10. Romanian Tech Startups Association – ROTSA, in partnership with Techcelerator and Rōnin, launches Startup Reaktor, an incubation platform for technology startups in Central and Eastern Europe (link).

11. The Youth in the Arena (Tinerii în Arenă) project, an initiative of the Romanian Business Leaders community,which has already reached its 3rd edition this year, has been designated the winner at European level by the Emerging Europe organization in the Youth Empowerment category (link).

🚀 Various news related to startups

12. Within SelectUSA, the Romanian startups Salarium, Credit Sky and Cyscale held pitches in front of investors, business people and representatives of other start-ups. Salarium and Cyscale won second and third places in these pitching sessions (link).

13. The Romanian proptech startup Bright Spaces has signed a partnership with Avison Young Romania and has developed a new solution for office space planning. The Bright Spaces team proposes a way of presenting and visualizing office spaces by transforming standard 2D plans into interactive 3D models. (link).

14. evoMAG expands the fast delivery options and offers customers a new option, in partnership with the BeeFast ultra-fast courier platform, which involves the delivery of products in less than 2 hours from the time of placing the order (link).

15. Voxa, Romanian streaming platform for audiobooks and ebooks, is available from this summer in the Republic of Moldova. This expansion is part of the company’s strategic development plan, which these days opens a new round of financing of up to €800K (link).

16. The Romanian startup TPS Engage, which offers digital OOH services, meaning that they digitize advertising on digital billboards in cities, has decided to change its name and identity and become Blindspot (link).

😅 Another one 

📢 Other news in the ecosystem

17. Essensys Software and mReady have completed a merging process. Through this approach, Romanian IT companies aim to join forces for a more accelerated development both on the local market and, especially, on the international market (link).

18. MedLife, the leader of the Romanian private medical services market, announces a new large partnership, following the signing of the acquisition of the majority package within Sweat Concept. The transaction marks the entry on a new line of business, the wellness, which complements the complex medical services offered nationwide (link).

Cheers

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

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