Money Buzz! Europa

Category: Startapp

  • Cartloop raises a €300K investment from GapMinder VC

    Cartloop raises a €300K investment from GapMinder VC

    Cartloop received a €300,000 investment from GapMinder VC fund and an angel investment from Tamas Cristian, the co-Founder of TypingDNA.

    The investment will be used to upgrade the solution, as the founders are looking to increase the number of customers and expand globally.

    What is Cartloop?

    Cartloop is a conversational marketing platform that has a 3-5x higher efficiency than its competitors in helping online merchants persuade customers to return to the site and buy products from the “cart” if they left without completing the order.

    The platform is using a proprietary technology to automate and personalize to a high degree the process of answering customers’ questions such as “Does this product have a guarantee?”, “How does this product work?”, “Can I return the product if it doesn’t fit or if I don’t like it?”. And this is used in combination with a reduced human intervention.

    Specifically, when a customer who agrees to receive support and marketing via SMS begins the process of com-pleting the order, but abandons, Cartloop’s experts contact him/her via text message to understand the reason for giving up and assist him/her if needed.

    The Cartloop platform was launched in April of this year by Andrei Negrău and Lisa Popovici, with the intention of bringing the online experience closer to that of a physical store.

    Hundreds of brands around the world are currently using Cartloop, as the platform is currently avail-able for English-speaking countries only: United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

    The startup plans to expand globally in mid-2021, starting with Europe. The first targeted countries are Spain, France and Germany.

  • Romanian startup Tailent expands internationally

    Romanian startup Tailent expands internationally

    Just a few months after their first investment round from Neogen Capital, the Romanian startup Tailent starts its international expansion.

    The company will expand Tailent Automation Platform Studio, for robot development, and Tailent Automation Platform Control Center, for managing robots in production environments, available to clients and partners all over the world.

    Tailent Automation Platform (TAP) offers flexibility, performance and scalability in developing and using software robots.

    The TAP Studio solution facilitates both every day automation in a low-code or no-code manner, but also the technical ability to tackle complex automation with the powerful built-in custom code functionality.

    Some examples are the automation of repetitive or redundant processes, integration of systems that were not intended to communicate with each other, key business solutions that no longer receive support from technology providers or systems where the development and integration of new features is expensive.

    Tailent customers are Romanian companies, ranging from public institutions, hotels, and Fortune 500 companies.

    The team is now focusing on adding technology partners and opening new markets in Europe, North and South America and Asia.

  • Techcelerator and Google, accelerator for Romanian startups

    Techcelerator and Google, accelerator for Romanian startups

    Techcelerator and Google for Startups announce the launch of ”Advancing AI” acceleration program for local startups looking to build AI products and scale their businesses.

    The program aims to boost the Romanian AI ecosystem by supporting AI entrepreneurs with access to the dedicated AI resources provided by Google.

    Applications are open until October 15th, 2020. All applicants will be invited to an online session during which Google AI experts will talk about the industry, opportunities, and success stories.

    The jury will select up to five teams

    The selected teams which will enter the program will have to cumulatively meet the following criteria: have a strong technical team with a prototype or a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) making use of technologies like AI, ML, Deep Learning, Big Data, Advanced Analytics.

    The startups should aim to have a feasible product, an internationally scalable solution, and a strong commitment to validate and expand fast in the targeted market.

    For this specific program, Techcelerator maintains the same level of potential investments as in the case of the Fintech program rolled out in parallel: up to 200,000 euros from GapMinder VC and access to co-investment deals from SeedBlink crowdfunding platform, business angel communities, like Tech Angels, and other international investors, as the startups’ progress during the acceleration program.

  • London FinTech start-up KodyPay raises £1.8 million

    London FinTech start-up KodyPay raises £1.8 million

    KodyPay, led by 20-Year-old Co-Founder and CEO Yao-Yun (Yoyo) Chang, has raised a £1.8 million seed round.

    Leading the financing was Cognition Foundry and Hank Uberoi, alongside a group of high-profile private investors.

    These include former members of senior management from Legal and General, Verifone and HP.

    KodyPay is a new mobile point of sale app and payment aggregator. Its technology allows users to pay for goods in-store without queueing.

    The platform enables businesses to perform all the necessary actions to carry out a standard electronic transaction and accept a multitude of different payment methods using a web and app-based technology platform.

    Who is Yoyo Chang

    Yao-Yun (Yoyo) Chang, CEO and co-founder KodyPay | Photo from technation.io

    At only 20 years old, CEO Yoyo Chang co-founded KodyPay in the final year of High School.

    Hoping to build a career in investment banking, Chang had started to invest in the stock market at the age of 13.

    With returns of over 80% in Q4 2016, he led his school team to first place in a national investment competition.

    However, in 2018, Chang first made a foray into the payments industry by self-investing £120,000 to start up KodyPay.

    Chang is currently working alongside co-founder Jack Howell whilst studying at the University of York.

  • Romanian platform Brio is listed on SeedBlink

    Romanian platform Brio is listed on SeedBlink

    Brio, the first and only platform for standardized digital tests addressed to Romanian students, is listed on SeedBlink, the largest equity crowdfunding platform in the region.

    The financing round will amount to EUR 270,000 (the company accepting over-subscription up to maximum EUR 350,000), for which the company will give up 9.09% (up to maximum 11.48%) of its shares.

    Pre-investment evaluation of Brio is EUR 2.7 million.

    Brio is a last generation SaaS type solution (software as a service) approved by the Ministry of Education and Research for school evaluation and testing.

    It is grounded on own scientifical analyses and the latest theories in the sciences of education at international level.

    Brio aims at large scale implementation at national level, based on the fact that it offers a digital product easy to use that has already passed the users test recording a very good social adoption rate during the lockdown period.

    Between March and August 2020, 18,000 students tested their knowledge through over 67,000 tests, and 260 schools chose Brio as an evaluation tool.  

    Moreover, the test engine of Brio conceived by a team of international experts in testing and psychometry, make the platform applicable to international markets as well, in particular the large regional market of European Community.

  • Teemyco raises €1m in a record seed funding round

    Teemyco raises €1m in a record seed funding round

    Teemyco, a Swedish start-up based in Stockholm is creating virtual office spaces. This is the company’s second to date funding round and was led by VC Luminar Ventures.

    The round was oversubscribed, involving contributions from early-stage VC firm Antler, recruitment firm Gazella and a number of angel investors.

    The investment will help Teemyco to launch its service and hire new employees.

    The virtual-office provider’s tech is still in beta mode and allows users to see what is going on in a virtual office space that can be shared with colleagues, with the aim of reproducing office interactions in a digital environment.

    They can choose a room to work beside a colleague, enter a meeting room for video calls, or spend time in the virtual coffee room.

  • Greek company InstaShop bought by Delivery Hero for €305 million

    Greek company InstaShop bought by Delivery Hero for €305 million

    Delivery Hero announced that it has acquired InstaShop, a leading online grocery marketplace in the Middle East and North Africa.

    Delivery Hero has acquired all InstaShop shares based on a valuation of USD 360 million. It is the biggest sum ever paid for a Greek startup.

    InstaShop was launched in June 2015. The company generates approximately USD 300 million GMV on a Q2 2020 annualized basis, up c. 330% year-on-year, and a positive EBITDA margin.

    It’s business model is marketplace-based: it connects customers with vendors and facilitates the purchase, while the shops take care of the logistics. The company offers scheduled as well as on-demand deliveries in 45 minutes on average.

    Partnering with approximately 1,500 vendors, the company operates in five countries: the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt and Lebanon.

    John Tsioris, CEO and Co-Founder of InstaShop, said: ”I really enjoyed working with Delivery Hero on this deal and am thrilled to continue to further expand the reach and quality of our service at InstaShop.”

  • UserGuiding raises $1.1 million led by Collective Spark

    UserGuiding raises $1.1 million led by Collective Spark

    UserGuiding has raised $1.1 million in a seed round to accelerate global expansion, enhance product development capabilities and hire the best talent to grow its core team.

    The funding round was led by Collective Spark, with participation from Galata Business Angels, Angel Effect and a group of angel investors from Turkey and Europe.

    This second round of funding came eleven months after the pre-seed round, which was also led by Collective Spark.

    UserGuiding was founded by two close-knit friends Osman Koc and Muhammet Enginar

    Since high school, they have always wanted to build their own company and upon graduation, they established a start-up studio intending to help entrepreneurs transform their businesses from ideation to execution.

    During this period, Osman and Muhammet shipped many web applications and frequently encountered “user onboarding” as an issue that cannot be tackled easily.

    Following completion of over ten custom-made projects, they decided to try their luck in San Francisco, where they were offered a job by a friend who worked for many years at Google.

    They came up with the idea of helping companies create engaging user onboarding flows in the most hassle-free way, convinced they could develop a less complex tool that employees with no technical background could easily use.

    UserGuiding was built on the premise of Osman and Muhammet aiming to support companies effectively create user onboarding flows and walkthroughs without needing to code.

    Osman Koc, the CEO of UserGuiding, stated: “The no-code revolution has already begun. GPT-3 wowed us with the possibilities it unlocked, Airtable helped us be 10x productive, and Webflow helped us build amazing websites. We will not write a line of code for jobs that require long, complicated coding in ten years or less. At that point, we aim to be the leading ‘no-code’ platform for user onboarding. We will strive to be the platform where people can make all the changes they require on web applications through a straightforward interface and, more importantly, without writing any code. We strongly believe that using our solution your web applications will be as agile as if they were built with WordPress or Wix.”

  • Innoship startup raises 550,000 EUR as seed investment

    Innoship startup raises 550,000 EUR as seed investment

    Innoship startup secured a seed investment from GapMinder VC. The investment of 550,000 EUR comes at a mere six months from the commercial launch of the solution.

    The company implemented the Innoship solution for its first customers at the beginning of 2020 and currently manages approximately 20,000 daily orders.

    The Innoship solution can be integrated with all large ecommerce platforms, warehouse management systems, ERP (enterprise resource planning), fulfillment and marketplace active in Romania and regionally.

    Its clients’ portfolio includes the most well-known names in the local ecommerce and distribution ecosystem such as Miniprix, Kalapod, OLX, Depanero, Network One Distribution, Dentstore, Oralix, Topline, xpertbeauty.ro, Arco Expert, Algernon, green-future.ro, mezoni.ro, Generalmotor, and many others.

    The seed investment round received from GapMinder VC will stimulate the accelerated growth of Innoship adoption among retailers active on the Romanian market and its first steps towards internationalization while speeding up the development of new functionalities for its platform.

    Innoship optimizes the interactions between retailers and carriers, streamlining the costs of courier services by up to 25% and increasing delivery performance by up to 15% through a dynamic allocation of the orders according to the criteria selected by the retailer in the platform.

    Innoship technology increases the quality of the shipping service experience, providing easy access to new fast delivery options while substantially reducing costs.

    The advanced machine-learning algorithms of the solution analyze the performance of different delivery options across the relevant geographic area and the retailer’s delivery points to allocate delivery orders based on customized criteria and the approach set by each retailer.

    This way, Innoship facilitates the access of retailer of all sizes to an advanced delivery management solution, which until now was only available for large ecommerce platforms.

  • Vienna startup Byrd raises €5m Series A to scale its global fulfilment platform

    Vienna startup Byrd raises €5m Series A to scale its global fulfilment platform

    Byrd has raised €5 million to scale its operation internationally. The Series A round was led by Rider Global, a venture fund with a strong focus on logistics, e-commerce and mobility.

    Since its start in 2016, Byrd has collected a total of more than €9 million from business angels and VCs, including Speedinvest, Reflex Capital, Hermann Hauser, and KK Incube, as well as public funding. 

    Byrd runs a fulfillment network without touching a single parcel or owning a single warehouse.

    The startup connects online merchants to an international warehouse network, enabling retailers to offer advanced shipping options on an international scale without needing to build their own logistics network.

    The company’s fulfillment platform integrates with leading e-commerce systems such as Shopify and qualified logistics partners in multiple countries, bringing retailers closer to their customers. 

    Beyond its core markets in Germany and Austria where the company started, it has fulfillment locations in the UK, and will launch new locations in Netherlands and France in the coming weeks.

    Currently, the company is able to ship 10.000 orders per day from more than 10 different warehouses, with storage capacities of more than 500.000 square meters. 

    Byrd is planning to add another three European countries to its fulfillment network in 2020, amounting to eight active markets by the end of the year.

  • Caledonian Braves, the football club run by fans through an app

    Caledonian Braves, the football club run by fans through an app

    Caledonian Braves, the Scottish Lowland Football League club with big ambitions, has launched the eagerly awaited Braves App as part of a ground-breaking series of initiatives that will put the club at the forefront of equality, inclusion and innovation in Scottish football.

    The Braves App has been created to put the club’s future direction in the palm of fans’ hands.

    Fans who download the app will be able to vote on decisions ranging from deciding the captain’s toss of heads or tails, issuing monthly How Brave Are You? challenges to the squad, and providing scouting reports from across Europe.

    It will include nominating official charities, setting board agenda items and taking a virtual seat at the boardroom table to shape the club’s strategy.

    The launch coincides with the premiere of Brave Calling, a new documentary that chronicles the journey from the club’s inception in the South of Scotland League as Edusport Academy to its place in the Lowland League and rebrand last year as Caledonian Braves.

    Braves have reiterated their mission to join the ranks of the Scottish Professional Football League by 2025 and take their fans on a journey to the ultimate destination of the Scottish Premiership.

    To help that objective, owner Chris Ewing is also recruiting a board of independent non-executive directors to help steer the strategy and also to reflect the modern and inclusive club he envisions.

  • Koala closed a €1.6m seed round led by Insurtech Gateway

    Koala closed a €1.6m seed round led by Insurtech Gateway

    Koala, a Paris based insurtech, announced an investment of €1.6m, led by Insurtech Gateway alongside Playfair Capital, Techstars Ventures, and private investors.

    Koala’s data-driven products proactively alert travelers to any disruption and pay-out instantly, no forms, no exclusions, no questions asked.

    Tracking all journeys in real-time, Koala instantly informs passengers as disruption occurs and issues cash compensation on the spot, whatever the cause of the delay might be.

    This raise will be used to support growth plans, team expansion and new product development.

    Ugo Weyl, Co-Founder and CEO at Koala said: “We are very excited to have Insurtech Gateway joining the Koala family, bringing their unique insurance expertise to the team. We are looking forward to having their support as we launch our product at Falcon 9 speed and scale internationally.”