The Q2 2020 has witnessed unprecedented growth despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown. Though there has been a major economic downturn all over the world, the venture industry appears to be strongly resilient. The deal activity in the second quarter of this year shows that the US-based VC investors are focused on a variety of industries such as healthtech, game tech, software startups and much more.
Top deals in Dublin in Q2 2020
It’s no secret that Dublin, the Irish capital is home to some of the leading tech startups in the world. There has been a boost in the tech startup ecosystem in Ireland of late, thanks to the support from the government, aspirational entrepreneurs, and a flourishing environment. Having said that, here are the top US VC deals in Dublin in Q2 2020 as reported by Pitchbook.
LetsGetChecked
Founder/s: Peter Foley
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: €104 million
Irish startup LetsGetChecked is a leading direct-to-consumer at-home health testing and insights company. Back in May, the company closed €65.21 million in a Series C funding round led by HLM Venture Partners and Illumina Ventures along with participation from new investors such as CommonFund Capital, Deerfield, and Angeles Investments and existing investors such as Optum Ventures, Transformation Capital, and Qiming Venture Partners USA.
The Irish medtech startup will use the investment to scaleup activity at the CLIA certified high complexity lab in California and increase its manufacturing, supply and testing capacity for COVID-19. The company will expand supply and business operations as well as support personnel across the US and Europe with this investment.
Glofox
Founder/s: Anthony Kelly, Conor O’Loughlin, Finn Hegarty
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: €20.8 million
Gym management software Glofox has announced additional funding of €9.2 million, which takes its Series A funding to €18.4 million. The round was led by Octopus Ventures along with participation from Notion Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Partech, and Tribal VC. This new investment will be used to let fitness businesses operate remotely and fulfil their customer fitness requirements online during the pandemic crisis. Also, Glofox will be able to thrive in the fitness industry with a strong digital presence.
Besides the investment, Glofox launched a new platform that lets gyms and fitness studios deliver both live streaming as well as premium on-demand content. The gym management software helps entrepreneurs in the fitness industry build successful businesses and enhance the health of people all over the world. The platform enables gym and studio owners deliver content and manage memberships, bookings, scheduling, payments, etc.
Profitero
Founder/s: Dmitry Vysotski, Konstantin Chernysh, Vol Pigrukh
Founded year: 2010
Total funding: €35.4 million
Profitero is a leading global enterprise e-commerce SaaS analytics platform based in Ireland. The company secured €18.33 million Series B funding round led by Scaleworks along with participation from Conviction Capital. The company will use the fresh funds to expand its business reach. This platform is used by Adidas, General Mills, L’Oreal and 4,000 other brands to accelerate their e-commerce sales.
Profitero’s proprietary technology estimates daily sales for products that are sold on Amazon and lets brands measure market share growth as well as opportunities for future investment. It is the first such platform in the industry to integrate Amazon sales and share metrics along with digital shelf analytics s that brands can quickly know the factors that will result in more sales.
evervault
Founder/s: Shane Curran
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: €17.5 million
evervault, a Dublin-based internet infrastructure startup closed a Series A funding round of €14.72 million led by Index Ventures along with existing partners such as Sequoia Capital, Frontline Ventures, and Kleiner Perkins. The other participants of the investment round include angel investors such as Dylan Field (Figma CEO), Kevin Hartz (Eventbrite co-founder), Olivier Pomel (Datadog CEO), and Alex Stamos (Facebook CSO).
The new funding will let evervault expand its team and empower developers to solve data privacy with ease. It believes that data privacy is a fundamental human right and operates with the mission to provide data privacy for everyone. Evervault is building the API for data privacy and its empowers developers to process highly sensitive data in a better and new way that is simple, scalable, and privacy-centric.
Drop Kitchen
Founder/s: Ben Harris, Jack Phelan, Jonny McCauley, Tim Redfern
Founded year: 2012
Total funding: €22.7 million
Drop, a smart kitchen platform, which operates with the objective to unify the fragmented cooking experience has raised €12 million in a Series A funding round. This investment comes from Alpha Edison, Richmond Global Ventures, Alsop Louie Partners, Morpheus Ventures, ACT Venture Capital, and Digital Irish Angels.
Drop provides a platform to connect appliance manufacturers, gorcers, and recipe publishers to home cooks. The company focused on hardware develops a connected kitchen scale sold via Apple Stores. Drop teams up with several appliance makers such as GE Appliances, Electrolux, Kenwood, and Bosch to integrate recipes with kitchen equipment.
OneProjects
Founder/s: Fionn Lahart, Christoph Hennersperger
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €11 million
Irish medical device startup OneProjects specialises in cardiac imaging innovations. In a recent move, the Irish medtech startup has raised €11 million Series A funding led by LSP, an investment from LSP Health Economics Fund 2 along with participation from Atlantic Bridge University Fund, Enterprise Ireland, and a slew of medtech entrepreneurs. This investment will help OneProjects expand its team in Dublin and Munich and advance its product development.
The innovative medtech company develops next-generation connected intra-vascular medical devices. The AI-powered devices are touted to treat cardiac arrhythmia. While this company is headquartered in Dublin, a majority of its R&D activities happen in Munich.
iQuate
Founder/s: Jason Keogh
Founded year: 2002
Total funding: €9.1 million
Irish software start iQuate bagged €9.18 million to fund a merger with Hypergrid, a Silicon Valley cloud management expert. These tech companies have joined to form CloudSphere that will focus on helping businesses to operate in the cloud environment. The investment round was led by Atlantic Bridge Capital along with private investors that backed iQuate earlier.
Iquate offers users with enterprise software analysis and discovery services. The platform lets users see through data centre complexity and helps them manage and optimise their IT assets to drive cost efficiencies and savings.
Buymie
Founder/s: Artavazd Sokhikyan, Devan Hughes
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: €10.7 million
Buymie, an Irish online grocery delivery startup provides same-day grocery delivery. In June this year, the company announced that it has bagged €8 million funding led by Wheatsheaf Group along with existing investors including Act Venture Capital, Haatch Ventures, HBAN, and Sure Valley Ventures and other notable investors. The same-day grocery delivery startup will use this investment to accelerate its expansion in Ireland and the UK.
Buymie works with the mission to minimise the environmental impact caused by grocery shopping. Buymie has signed a deal with Lidl Ireland in an attempt to rollout its services across all major cities in Ireland.
SoapBox Labs
Founder/s: Patricia Scanlon
Founded year: 2013
Total funding: €12.1 million
Irish startup SoapBox Labs that develops speech recognition technology capable of modelling distinctive voice and speech behaviours of kids has secured €5.8 million series A funding from Adria, Elkstone Capital, and a slew of unnamed private investors. The startup will use the investment to capitalise on its strengths while global market opportunities are opening up in the industry.
SoapBox Labs’ tech is referred to as ‘Siri for kids’ and is used in many tech applications, robotics, games, and smart toys. The company has developed a child-specific speech tech that creates age-appropriate, accurate, and safe voice-enabled experiences for children.
Vela Games
Founder/s: Brian Kaiser, Lisa Newon George, Travis George
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €6.3 million
Vela Games is an Irish game development studio that strives to create service-based games for gaming enthusiasts and delivers genre-defining experiences. In a recent move, the company secured a seed funding round of €2.82 million from a new investor Lvp along with existing partners IIU. The fund will be used to continue the development of MOCO, which will let multiplayer games to reach new heights.
The independent game development studio creates engaging and cooperative games that keeps players first. The team comprises industry veterans and works with the mission to reinvent multiplayer games with cooperative experiences.
Main image picture credits: Glofox
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