Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic effect, the minister for the Portuguese government announced new measures to help growing tech startups. It announced €25 million to protect the tech startup ecosystem in the country. While a slew of businesses across the world are shutting down due to the pandemic crisis, this move from the government in Portugal is sure to keep the tech startups operating as usual as they get the necessary help to meet what their employees need and sustain their business.
Top funded Portuguese tech startups
Though there are many tech startups, only a few of them turn out to be successful. Despite this fact, it is important to keep these startups operating as usual as these are important elements of any country’s economy and contribute to the innovation and creativity and provide employment to the highly skilled talent out there. It also makes sense as the startups will need assistance in terms of finance and support to help grow their business. And, this is where the efforts taken by the government will help them.
Without further ado, here is a slew of tech startups that have raised funding in 2019 and 2020. Take a look at these startups below as sourced from Dealroom.
Infraspeak
Founder/s: Felipe Ávila da Costa, Luis Martins
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €4.9 million
Infraspeak is a customisable maintenance platform, which optimises, automates, and simplifies management processes for cleaning, maintenance, and inspections of buildings including hospitals, hotels, airports, and shopping centres. This startup works with major companies such as Siemens, InterContinental Hotels and Domino’s Pizza and helps them run their maintenance processes efficiently.
Back in October last year, Infraspeak secured €3 million funding from firstminute capital, Construtech Ventures, and Innovation Nest. The Investment will be used to enter into new markets and accelerate its growth in the existing markets.
Replai
Founder/s: João Vieira da Costa, Francisco Pacheco
Founded year: 2019
Funding: €1.1 million
The Portuguese startup Replai that uses AI-driven short videos to keep the sports fans engaged. It automates the creation of such short videos, which is a rage in the esports sector. Replai deploys advanced Artificial Intelligence algorithms to put together a set of highlights automatically from livestream competitions and create customised clips for each social network thereby maximising audiences. Also, it will help sponsors and advertisers generate revenue.
In June 2020, Replai secured €1.2 million funding led by Bright Pixel, Clever Advertising, Ideias Glaciares, and business angels from WhatsApp, Nekki, Playrix, Unbabel, and Dashdash. The investment will be used for the business development, international expansion, and hire fresh talent.
Omniflow
Founder/s: Pedro Ruão
Founded year: 2011
Funding: €2.1 million
Omniflow develops and manufactures an intelligent energy platform for IoT. Its technology dubbed Omniled is a microgeneration and energy storage solution sourced from renewable resources such as solar and wind. Omniled technology can be used in smart parking, public lighting, video surveillance, weather stations, etc. With the integration into a digital platform, this tech manages the production of energy from multiple sources, interacts with other solutions and more.
Early in 2019, Omniflow bagged €2 million funding from HCapital New Ideas Fund, which is a Portuguese VC fund focused on energy, mobility, and smart territories. The investment will provide them the support to work faster and make it function as intended in over 20 countries.
Barkyn
Founder/s: Andre Jordao, Ricardo Macedo
Founded year: 2017
Funding: €9.3 million
Barkyn is a food subscription and online veterinary care service for dogs. This startup provides a monthly subscription box of food that can be personalised as pet the dog’s diet and provide 24/7 online access to veterinary care. To date, Barkyn has served over 40,000 homes across Europe including Spain, Italy, and Portugal.
Recently, Barkyn secured €5 million Series A funding round led by Indico Capital Ventures, and All Iron Ventures along with particular poem. The monthly subscription box company Barkyn intends to use this investment to focus on the unobstructed growth of the startup.
iLoF
Founder/s: Joana Paiva, Luís Valente, Mehak Mumtaz
Founded year: 2019
Funding: €2.9 million
iLoF (Intelligent Lab on Fiber) works on a patented cloud-based library of disease fingerprints. Its disruptive platform technology detects nanoscale biomolecules in blood to create accurate optical fingerprints of the stage of disease of the patient. This helps the startup improve screen processes, accelerate drug discovery for complex diseases and shed light on the COVID-19 infection.
In a recent development, iLoF raised €870k from Microsoft’s Venture fund M12 and Mayfield. With this investment, the startup aims to create more effectively and healthcare trajectories for those suffering from health disorders.
FaceStore
Founder/s: Paulo Solinho Barbosa
Founded year: 2017
Funding: €7 million
FaceStore is a Portuguese a cloud-based social selling platform. The company lets merchants to sell products on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram by providing a customisable and responsive storefront. It provides features such as product management, marketing tools such as promotions and discounts management, payment integration with gateways such as PayPal and more. It charges users a monthly subscription fee based on the sales channel and storage space. Back in mid-2019, FaceStore secured a Series B investment round of nearly $6.9 million (nearly €5.8 million) funding from Maven Capital Partners and Downing Ventures.
HUUB
Founder/s: Luís Roque, Pedro Santos, Tiago Craveiro, Tiago Paiva
Founded year: 2015
Funding: €4.4 million
HUUB is a fashion logistics startup that lets online fashion stores focus on their business and not on shipping. It integrates with e-commerce sites and provides a complete range of logistics solutions such as picking, storage, follow-up, stock management, packing, and shipping. Its algorithms analyses sales to determine replenishment strategies and eliminate understocking.
The fashion logistics startup bagged €1.5 million from Maersk, a Danish shipping giant as a part of its first investment. The investment will support HUUB in its expansion plans and grow its business further. It intends to triple its number of brands, expand its European logistics operations, and develop its commercial strategies and technology.
Smartex
Founder/s: Antonio Rocha, Gilberto Loureiro, Paulo Ribeiro
Founded year: 2018
Funding: €1.6 million
Portuguese startup Smartex helps the textile industry save a lot by developing cameras, sensors, and accelerometers that can detect defects in fabrics immediately after weaving via Artificial Intelligence and computer vision. Smartex system detects all types of defects in the fabric threads that often escaped the human eye due to the thinness of it as compared to a normal thread. The technology of this startup can be used in the weaving phase and other stages such as dyeing and stamping.
Earlier in 2019, Smartex raised nearly $250k (nearly €220k) from SOSV and Hac. A few months later, the company secured €1.4 million funding from European Innovation Council and Momenta Ventures.
Tonic App
Founder/s: Andrew Barnes, Christophe de Kalbermatten, Daniela Seixas, Dávid Borsós
Founded year: 2016
Funding: €3.6 million
Tonic App is a digital healthcare tool that is designed to help medical professionals diagnose and treat patients. The mobile app consolidates all the resources required by doctors for their everyday work. It also obtained the CE certification as a medical device and acquired more than one-third of the doctors in the country.
The mobile medical app secured €3.5 million led by Armilar Venture Partner and Vesalius Biocapital Partners. This investment will let the startup expand to three of the five largest markets in Europe in healthcare including France, Spain and the UK.
Codavel
Founder/s: Rui Costa, Diogo Ferreira
Founded year: 2018
Funding: €2.3 million
Codavel works with the mission to help mobile applications make sure each user gets an outstanding experience irrespective of the network speed, device or user location. It lets mobile apps ensure to provide users with a 5-star experience so that they enjoy a frustration-free experience. The Portuguese startup secured €1.3 seed funding led by Armilar Venture Partners back in May this year to help achieve its mission.
Stock photo from Onur Akkurt/Shutterstock
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