Europe-based venture capital firm OTB Ventures has unveiled a new fund called OTB Growth Fund I. This fund, totalling $60M (€50.6M) will extend its support to companies with more investments as they look to scale up to pursue and accelerate international growth opportunities. OTB Ventures is a venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology businesses with R&D in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and global potential.
Backed by the ESCALAR programme of the European Commission and the European Investment Fund (EIF), this fund will come up with a new investment approach supporting venture capital and growth financing for European companies, the press release read.
OTB Ventures Investments
Last year, OTB Ventures launched its first fund where it raised more than $100M (nearly €84.3M) to deploy in the European startup ecosystem. Besides that, it has led the $60M (approx €50.6M) Series B funding round for Romania’s FintechOS (now headquartered in London) and the $87M (nearly €73.3M) Series C funding round for Finland’s ICEYE.
Other OTB Ventures investments include Cosmose, SpaceKnow, Silent Eight, Minit and Segron. In addition to that, the company has done some early stage funding for Scalarr and Ondato. Meanwhile, OTB Ventures has done its first strategic exit with the sale of BabbleLabs to Cisco in 2020.
Future Plans
OB Ventures recent investment will further allow the company to empower Europe’s entrepreneurs to scale their businesses globally, with advancement in technology and in R&D hubs in the CEE region. Besides that, the company further plans to support continued investment for OTB Fund I portfolio companies, which comes with diverse portfolios of cybersecurity, space, fintech and robotic automation.
Meanwhile, OTB Ventures is also planning to invest in a total of 15 companies to complete its portfolio by mid-2022.
Adam Niewinski, co-founder and Managing Partner of OTB Ventures, says, “We are delighted to launch our second fund, the OTB Growth Fund I, and are grateful for the continued support of the EIF. Our investments to date span a number of vertical markets – including fintech, cybersecurity, digital automation and space technology – and with our new fund we will continue to back successful technology businesses that address globally relevant opportunities and high-value markets.”
ESCALAR
European Scale-up Action for Risk capital (ESCALAR) is a programme that has been unveiled by the European Commission and managed by the EIF to bridge the gap between financial requirements and European companies (scale-ups). For this pilot programme, ESCALAR comes with a total investment of €300M for the programme. ESCALAR mainly invests in those funds with a focus on scale-ups. It aims to support both new and existing funds.
