Madrid, the capital of Spain, is one of the world’s most-visited tourist destinations. Besides this, the city is also one of the biggest startup hubs in Europe. The tech startup ecosystem in the city is backed by government initiatives, investors and entrepreneurial vision. Of late, the tech scene in the city has grown considerably, making it an innovative super hub.
Top VC deals in Madrid in Q2 2020
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Spanish government deferred tax payments for both SMEs and self-employed to help the companies across industries that have been impacted badly due to the crisis. Despite this grim scenario brought about by the pandemic, several Madrid tech startups have secured funding from VC firms. And, here we list the top VC deals secured by Madrid tech startups in Q2 2020 as sourced by PitchBook.
Copado
Founder/s: Federico Larsen, Philipp Rackwitz
Founded year: 2013
Total funding: €31.1M
Copado, based out of Madrid, has secured $26M (nearly €23.85M) Series B funding. This investment round was led by Insight Partners, along with participation from Salesforce Ventures, an existing investor and new partners such as Lead Edge Capital, Perpetual Investors, ISAI Cap Venture (ISAI and Capgemini joint fund). The Series B investment round will let Copado expand its global distribution and speed up product innovation.
Copado is a leading native DevOps platform for Salesforce that enables enterprises seeking to accelerate their Saleforce deployments to increase developer productivity, simplify the release process, and maximise return on investment. It already serves over 250 enterprises including MassMutual, Fair Trade, Vlocity, and Shell.
OnTruck
Founder/s: Iñigo Juantegui, Samuel Fuentes, Rika Christanto
Founded year: 2016
Total funding: €53.1M
In June, OnTruck bagged €17M funding led by OGCI Climate Investments (OGCI CI) along with existing investors such as Cathay Innovation, Atomico, Idinvest Partners and Total Carbon Neutrality Ventures and a new investor – Endeavor Catalyst. The logistics and transport company will use the investment to accelerate the development of OnTruck’s transport network and its technology.
OnTruck is a digital road freight platform that uses its technology to maximise efficiency across the road freight marketplace by identifying the behavioural pattern of drivers and geolocation. With these insights, the company offers customised routes that suit the preferences of drivers and reduce the distance between the origin and destination of the freight.
Anyverse
Founder/s: Victor Gonzalez
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: €3M
Madrid-based Anyverse took to the headlines in April to announce that it has secured its first funding round. It completed €3M funding led by Bullnet Capital and Inveready, two Spanish deep tech investment firms. It will use the fresh funds to boost software development and secure an unparalleled position in the autonomous system markets.
Anyverse works with the mission to shorten the production cycle in advanced perception systems for autonomous vehicles, robotics, smart cameras, and UAVs, among others. Its solution applies a physics-based simulation approach to synthetic data. Anyverse’s technology banks on photomtric-accurate light simulations to transmit data that lets companies train and test machine learning modules.
WOOM
Founder/s: Clelia Morales, Laurence Fontinoy
Founded year: 2015
Total funding: €4.1M
WOOM, a startup that focuses on women’s health has announced that it has closed the fourth investment round at €2M. The funding round was led by BrightCap Ventures, along with participation from Begin Capital. The femtech startup will deploy the fresh funding to continue to concentrate on accompanying women all through their lives starting from cycle tracking to menopause.
This Madrid-based femtech startup was founded with the vision to help women understand themselves better by offering them a personalised experience via the application. WOOM intends to help women conceive or make the decision to consult a specialist quickly.
Playtomic
Founder/s: Domingo Guzman, Felix Ruiz, Pablo Carro, Pedro Clavería, Sergio Servet
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €8.8M
Playtomic, a Madrid-based startup bagged €1.7M funding led by GP Bullhound and Optimizer Invest in April this year. This investment follows the €6M investment that the company secured last year. The fresh investment will let Playtomic grow via both product development and acquisitions.
Playtomic is a booking app for football, paddle, and tennis courts. According to the startup, the idea behind the sports startup is to let people practice sports in a convenient way and reserve facilities. It keeps sports centres busy and helps improve efficiency with digitalisation. The service can also be used to find players with similar skill levels and become a part of a social sports community.
Frontity
Founder/s: Luis Herranz, Pablo Postigo
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: €1.4M
Frontity, a Spanish startup bagged €1M seed funding led by Automattic, which is the parent company of WooCommerce, Tumblr, and WordPress.com and K Fund, a VC firm. Significant business angels in the Spanish startup ecosystem also took part in the funding round. With this investment, Frontity will be able to meet its mission of making it easier to build scalable websites with React and WordPress without compromising on rolling out new features and framework development.
Initially, Frontity was started as a mobile app builder for WordPress blogs. Later, it decided to bet on the web and work with WordPress publishers to let them improve the performance of their mobile sites and user experience.
Kymatio
Founder/s: Fernando Mateus Fernandez
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €1.2M
In June, Kymatio, the SaaS platform raised €725k as an extension to its first round of investment to accommodate new partners Banco Sabadell Bstartup and JME Venture Fund. Besides this, the financing round was led by The Crowd Angel along with support from Wayra, Telefónica’s open innovation hub, and Enrico Raggini and other prominent business angels.
Kymatio intends to use this investment to fuel its sales and develop its product by adding functionality to identify, analyse, and cover everything that an organisation will need to mitigate cybersecurity risks associated with employees and information.
TaxDown
Founder/s: Alvaro Falcones Muñoz, Enrique García Moreno, Joaquin Fernandez
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: €900k
TaxDown, a Spanish startup that eases the income tax return filing process for taxpayers has obtained €700k investment from business angels such as Vladimir Ristanovic and James Argalas, directors of Axos Financial, Inc. and Axos Bank, and Baldomero Falcones, former chairman of MasterCard, former chairman and former CEO of FCC and former COO of Banco Santander. The company intends to explore its global expansion with a focus on Latin America and Europe.
TaxDown has revolutionised tax advice by being lone of the pioneers in digital service that lets users file income tax returns easily. It claims to guarantee the taxpayers the desired results. As this company is the collaborator of the Tax Agency, taxpayers can present their income statements on their own platform. The digital and automatic solution maximises savings.
Erudit AI
Founder/s: Alejandro Martinez Agenjo, Ricardo Michel Reyes
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: €1.4 M
Erudit AI announced that it secured €600k led by DraperB1, Encomenda Smart Capital, Bizrupt, and Archipelago Next in May this year. The investment will be used to cover the process between the launch of its SaaS and that of a consistent product-market fit.
Erudit AI develops unique machine learning models focused on the study of mental health, work environment, and personality. It uses machine learning models efficiently in the capture and automated processing of data for HR analytics.
Main image picture credits: OnTruck
