Romanian Startup Ecosystem Radar (June 2023)

🌞 Summer Read Recommendation for Startup Enthusiasts

🚀 We’re thrilled to share an exciting article with you that offers a comprehensive overview of startup programs and events taking place in Romania from January to June 2023. 🗓️

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Venture capital, M&A and funding-related news

1. Binnno announced the winners of its virtual pitch competition. One Learning, an EdTech company founded by Ioana Axinte, won the $12K scholarship for Draper University’s Silicon Valley program (link).

2. White Image, one of the largest companies on the email marketing market in Romania, is taken over 75% by Mediapost Hit Mail, the largest direct and relational marketing group in Romania and Bulgaria (link).

3. AROBS Transilvania Software launched AROBS Polska following the successful acquisition of a 94% majority stake in SYDERAL Polska (link).

4. Finqware, a Romanian fintech licensed by the National Bank of Romania to provide open banking services, is looking for €3M with the help of SeedBlink in order to automate the financial operations of large companies at European level (link).

5. Catalyst Romania Fund II, a leading venture capital fund in Southeast Europe, has invested €2M to support the scaling efforts of the ESX platform (link).

6. SeedBlink launched Nimity, a product created for entrepreneurs and private investors, designed to help them manage their investment portfolio more easily (link). They are also expanding in the DACH region after mobilizing so far €200M into European tech startups (link). Moreover, they entered into a strategic partnership with Equidam, an online startup evaluation platform (link).

7. Undelucram.ro, the largest online employee community in Romania and one of the largest in the CEE region, has closed a €1M funding round. The lead investor in this round was Sofia Angels Ventures (link).

8. The Romanian startup Stailer, which launched an online booking platform for beauty salons, has obtained an investment of €150K from a German investor (link).

9. Dexory, formerly known as BotsAndUS, a startup founded by three Romanians in the UK, has successfully secured a $19M investment in a Series A funding round led by Atomico (link).

10. Dressingz, the luxury SH clothes marketplace has attracted €300K in funding on the Ronin crowdfunding platform (link).

Meme break

News related to programs and events

11. The six finalist teams of the pre-acceleration program Venture Program by EIT Digital has presented their ideas at the DemoDay Alpha, organized at the end of the first validation phase of the Startup Reaktor incubator (link).

12. The first edition of the Cluj Hackathon brought new technologies closer to enthusiasts, being the first hackathon in Romania dedicated to Artificial Intelligence and Generative AI (link).

13. The Romanian big data startup Veridion announces “Hacking Big Numbers“, a technology hackathon competition held in July and dedicated to innovation, artificial intelligence, and business data (link).

14. Rubik Hub hosted the Rubik Garage accelerator’s demo day featuring 24 startup presentations (link) They also announced the winners of the RubikEDU incubator (link).

15. Techsylvania, the annual technology conference and innovation festival held in Cluj-Napoca, and Unchain Fintech Festival, a conference related to fintech & blockchain organized in Oradea, have been organized in June.

Various news related to startups

16. Vatis Tech, active in the segment of voice recognition technology based on artificial intelligence launched a new version of the speech-to-text model for the Romanian language (link).

17. The SaaS platform for automated management and centralization of eCommerce activities easySales now integrates access to the Altex marketplace (link).

18. Mogo Romania, the fintech for used vehicle financing, partners with PayU for streamlined online credit payments (link).

19. The Romanian Smart City Association launches Zen City, a full-service B2G marketing agency specialized in providing strategic and creative marketing solutions for the Smart City Industry (link).

20. Matei Stănculescu, Anca Amariei and Diana Iosu launched, with an investment of €80K, Eka – Centrul Stării de Bine, the first hub in Romania with integrated psychotherapy services , well-being and personal development (link).
21. Bogdan Speteanu and Mircea Dihel are working on developing a mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform called MOOV Leasing (link).

22. Humans.ai, the Romanian startup that provides blockchain and artificial intelligence solutions, launches a blockchain for AI. It is intended to ensure the safe and ethical use of artificial intelligence (link).