Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania has a growing local startup community with many of them having attained international success. In addition to a vibrant startup community, the city is also home to over 20 business hubs and accelerators. It is emerging as the world’s biggest sandbox for tech startups that welcomes and supports innovative companies.
The Lithuanian capital has a favourable business environment that attracts foreign businesses and funding. It was ranked a leading city by FDII Index back in 2019 with over 1,000 greenfield FDI projects per 100,000 inhabitants. The city has a business-friendly regulatory environment, open data policy, and successful integration of newcomers. Without further ado, here we have listed some fast-growing Vilnius tech startups to watch out for in 2020 as sourced from Dealroom.
Kilo.Health
CEO: Tadas Burgaila
Founded year: 2013
Why its hot: Kilo.Health is a Lithuanian digital health startup that intends to prove its customers that being healthy is not a suffering and the path to good health can be fun and joyful. The company provides a slew of digital products such as personalised exercising schedules, diet planners, customisable meal recipe generators, and much more to help consumers follow a healthy lifestyle.
Alternative Payments
Founder: Wolf King
Founded year: 1999
Why its hot: Alternative Payments provide a global payment infrastructure to assist e-commerce companies in expanding their revenue streams with a broad portfolio of payment solutions local to their consumers. The portfolio includes popular local payment options including Sofort, giropay, iDEAL, SEPA DirectDebit, CASHU, Paysafecard, etc. It is supported by the most popular e-commerce platforms.
ConnectPay
CEO: Saulius Racevicius
Founded year: 2017
Why its hot: ConnectPay is a banking alternative meant for online-focused businesses. It is a regulated financial institution, which is supervised by the Central Bank of Lithuania. The fintech startup is a rapidly growing business-friendly bank for internet-based companies. It provides facilities such as easy onboarding, works on custom solutions, and more. ConnectPay assures that the data is exchanged securely.
Vinted
Founders: Milda Mitkute, Justas Janauskas
Funding: €232 million
Founded year: 2008
Why its hot: Vinted is an online marketplace startup for used clothes. The online retailer works with the mission to make second-hand fashion the prime choice worldwide. Vinted attained unicorn status in late 2019 and offers over 180 million second-hand fashion items and provides great chances to sell and buy quickly, easily, and safely across 11 European markets.
NanoAvionics
Founder: Vytenis Buzas
Funding: €14.7 million
Founded year: 2014
Why its hot: NanoAvionics, a spin-off from Vilnius University is an advanced nano-spacecraft equipment manufacturer. It develops high-performance, low-cost chemical propulsion system for small satellites along with many successful in-orbit implementations in collaboration with ESA (European Space Agency) and the European Commission. NanoAvionics’ technology is meant to improve precision and increase the satellite’s orbit lifetime by up to 5x.
CityBee
CEO: Lukas Yla
Funding: €110 million
Founded year: 2012
Why its hot: CityBee is a Vilnius-based car-sharing startup, which relieves users from concerns of payments, repairs, and insurance involved in owning a car. It operates with the intention to become one of the largest car-sharing startups in Europe. CityBee has been promoting car and bike sharing culture in Lithuania and has gone through numerous trials and challenges to design a working and replicable business model.
GoRamp
Founders: Jevgenij Polonis, Marius Repecka, Ugne Palionyte
Funding: €150k
Founded year: 2016
Why its hot: GoRamp is a real-time logistics platform connecting supply chain members. Its prime target are retailing and manufacturing companies with the necessity to cover end-to-end logistics processes, and centralise information and documentation exchange within the supply chain. Earlier this year, GoRamp secured €120k VC funding from Presto Ventures, Startup Wise Guys, and business angel Gintautas Lukauskis.
CGTrader
Founders: Dalia Lasaite, Marius Kalytis
Funding: €2.2 million
Founded year: 2011
Why its hot: CGTrader is one of the world’s largest sources of licensable stock and custom 3D models. The CGTrader Marketplace for 3D models has over 800,000 licensable 3D models and the CGTrader Enterprise 3D Modeling for enterprise customers and online retailers lets them transform their 2D product images into 3D photorealistic models.
GOSU Data Lab
Founder: Alisa Chumachenko
Founded year: 2017
Why its hot: GOSU Data Lab is an AI-driven video coach, which provides personalised, AI-driven tools and guidance that enable gamers improve their competitive gaming skills. The platform has come up with a desktop voice assistant to improve users’ skills in real-time by providing tactics, strategy, and feedback proactively to gamers as they play. It knows users’ data, congratulates their achievements, assigns tasks, and provides motivation.
Stock photo from Nina Alizada/Shutterstock
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