Money Buzz! Europa

Tag: GapMinder

  • Romanian chatbot developer Druid attracts a $ 2.5 million Series A investment

    Romanian chatbot developer Druid attracts a $ 2.5 million Series A investment

    Druid, a company specialized in developing intelligent virtual assistants (chatbots), closed a new round of financing of 2.5 million dollars.

    The round was led by GapMinder Ventures fund with $ 2.2 million. The rest of the amount was invested by Early Game Ventures and private investors.

    Thus, Druid becomes one of the best-capitalized startups in Romania, with total investments worth 5.8 million dollars attracted since its launch in 2018.

    Druid revenues increased by 580% in 2020 compared to 2019, in the context in which the market for conversational solutions based on artificial intelligence has an average growth rate of 22% over the next four years, reaching $ 13.9 billion in 2025, according to a Marketsandmarkets study.

  • 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.

  • SecurifAI lists on SeedBlink and aim to reach a value of EUR 15 million

    SecurifAI lists on SeedBlink and aim to reach a value of EUR 15 million

    The founders of SecurifAI, developer of video analysis solutions recorded by surveillance or monitoring cameras, aim to get 200,000 euros by listing on the crowdfunding platform SeedBlink.

    The listing on the platform dedicated to technology start-ups will take place tomorrow, August 25.

    The company was launched in 2016 by Valeriu Filip, Andrei Gogan – IT specialists with almost 20 years of experience – and Radu Ionescu, Professor Dr. at the Department of Artificial Intelligence (Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics of the University of Bucharest).

    The amount of 200,000 euros will be used in the next 16 months for the development of SecurifAI’s technical and sales teams. At this moment the company has ten employees.

    The investment round will be led by GapMinder, a capital fund that last year invested 50,000 euros in SecurifAI.

    SecurifAI’s management estimates that through this listing it will obtain 75,000 euros from the GapMinder fund and 125,000 euros from the investors on SeedBlink, with the possibility of overwriting up to the limit of 150,000 euros.

    So far, SecurifAI has obtained funds of approximately 250,000 euros: 200,000 euros representing research grants and 50,000 euros as a pre-seed investment from GapMinder.

    The co-founders also invested over 200,000 euros during the four years since the company was created.

    International expansion in the USA

    One of SecurifAI’s main objectives for the next years is to expand internationally.

    Thus, recently, the company opened an office in Sussex (Delaware State, USA) and applied for the registration of a patent in the USA in the field of work safety (HSSE), more precisely the detection of persons wearing protective equipment.

    To support the development of other markets, the three co-founders of SecurifAI want to get in the next three years a Series A investment – the amount of money is estimated to be around one million euros.

    The company will close the year 2020 with revenues of approximately 150,000 euros, and for next year the management estimates 250-300,000 euros.

  • 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.

  • Techcelerator continues the acceleration program with nine startups

    Techcelerator continues the acceleration program with nine startups

    Techcelerator launched its fourth batch with 9 startups selected from a number of 250 initial applications, which will benefit from intensive mentoring. The acceleration program will take place exclusively online.

    With projects from areas such as HealthTech, FinTech, legal, electronics, RPA or lead generation for companies, the startups of this batch are:

    – Aggranda – creates software robots that automate repetitive processes within companies. This way, Aggranda helps employees to spend more time dedicated to activities with higher added value, and also helps companies to scale faster.

    – AMSIMCEL develops a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform to accelerate the physical verification stage of integrated circuits. The product targets the manufacturers of integrated circuits (B2B), offering high speed and precise verification that will shorten the development / production cycle.

    – credia.store: a digital consumer credit brokerage platform, available for physical retailers and service providers, which helps increase their sales and offers an additional sales channel for banks and non-banking financial institutions.

    – DATA AGAINST DATA connects personal users with any personal data operator, empowering their choices through technology and increasing the confidence in the data industry through transparency.

    – Lab7 develops SmartCover, an intelligent office chair cushion that monitors the user’s posture and provides directions, in order to take a correct position.

    – OncoChain: innovative blockchain-based platform that facilitates the collection of data useful in research, personalized medicine and patient-centered healthcare in the oncology field.

    – Soleadify: search engine for companies, used by marketing and sales teams to find the ideal customers.

    – Voxi Kids: the first platform that connects speech therapists and children through an application that offers special exercises to improve listening and pronunciation.

    – YeParking: a solution for effectively distributing, renting, monetizing and using the parking infrastructure of a city. This includes residential, commercial or private parking spaces.

    Techcelerator’s strategic partner, GapMinder Venture Partners BV, reserved up to 1 million euros for investments in the 9 companies in exchange for a stake in the company.

    The selected companies have the opportunity to access funds from TechAngels. Based on the partnership between the two entities, GapMinder will participate in any round of investments between 40,000 and 200,000 euros made by TechAngels members with a similar amount.

    GapMinder Venture Partners BV has reached a value of over 40 million euros and has invested in 35 companies so far. The venture capital investment fund is co-financed through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020, implemented by the European Investment Fund.