Lithuania has a growing local startup community with many of them having attained international success. In addition to a vibrant startup community, the country is also home to a slew of business hubs and accelerators. It is emerging as one of the world’s biggest sandbox for tech startups that welcomes and supports innovative companies.
VC-based Lithuanian tech startups
The Lithuanian capital Vilnius 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. And, this is where most tech startups in Lithuania are concentrated at. Without further ado, here we have listed some of the VC-based Lithuanian tech startups to watch out for in 2020 as sourced from Dealroom.
Vinted
Founder/s: Milda Mitkute, Justas Janauskas
Founded year: 2008
Total funding: €232M
Vinted, a Vilnius-based online marketplace for used clothes attained the unicorn status late last year. The online retailer secured €128M funding in an equity round valuing over €1B. This funding round was backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners along with participation from Sprints Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Accel and Burda Principal Investments.
Vinted’s mission is to make second-hand fashion the first choice worldwide. It offers over 180 million second-hand fashion items and provides excellent chances to sell and buy quickly, safely, and easily across 11 European markets. In 2019 alone, €1.3 billion of gross merchandise volume is expected to be transacted on Vinted – going back into the pockets of its members.
CityBee
CEO: Lukas Yla
Founded year: 2010
Total funding: €110M
Based out of Vilnius, CityBee is a car-sharing startup that secured €110M funding from its owner Modus Group, a hybrid VC firm. With the investment, the startup announced an international tender to buy over 5,000 new cars and progress into one of the biggest European car-sharing companies.
CityBee relieves users from the ever-increasing costs of insurance, payments, and repairs involved in owning a car. It lets users easily rent a car starting from €1.14 per minute through its app. Given that the car-sharing market is growing at a rapid pace, CityBee intends to expand into Estonia, Latvia, and Poland with its expansion plans.
NanoAvionics
Founder/s: Laurynas Mačiulis, Linas Sargautis, Vytenis Buzas
Founded year: 2014
Total funding: €14.7M
NanoAvionics, an international nano-satellite missions integrator and consortium partners KSAT and Antwerp Space have been awarded €10M funding by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020, ESA’s ARTES and private investors. This funding that was secured in 2019 was for the first demonstration of the pre-cursor stage of GioT (Global Internet of Things) nano-satellite constellation.
Vilnius-based NanoAvionics is a spin-off from Vilnius University. It is an advanced nano-spacecraft equipment manufacturer, which 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.
SME Finance
Founder/s: Audrius Milukas, Marius Svidinskas
Founded year: 2016
Total funding: €10M
SME Finance, the largest non-bank factoring provider in the Baltics, announced a partnership with Citadele Bank earlier this year with an initial investment of €10M. With this partnership, the small and medium-sized companies in Lithuania will get the valuable financial support that is needed to maintain and develop their everyday business. The bank will also provide cash management and account opening services to SMEs.
SME Finance helps you develop your business instead of worrying about the cash flow. The company operates with the vision to help businesses grow smoothly by providing easy and quick funding solutions through invoice finance and business loans. SME entrepreneurs appreciate alternative financing facilities due to their flexibility and diversity. It ensures there is a regular flow of income so that businesses can grow.
CGTrader
Founder/s: Dalia Lasaite, Marius Kalytis
Founded year: 2011
Total funding: €2.2M
CGTrader bagged €2M funding in an investment round led by Karma Ventures along with participation from its current investors Intel Capital and Practica Capital. This fund will be used to accelerate the growth of its marketplace, build infrastructure to make the workflow of 3D designers more efficient and expand its presence.
It 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.
Profitus
Founder/s: Viktorija Vanagė
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €5.4M
Profitus is a real estate investment platform for the Baltic region and other countries in Europe. The company operates with the mission to unite people and provide them with the opportunity to invest small amounts of money in real estate, to implement their own real estate projects, and to become partners in real estate projects. With Profitus, users can invest as little as €100 real estate and borrow much for related projects easier and faster than from banks.
GOSU.AI
Founder/s: Alisa Chumachenko, Peter Romov
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €4.6M
GOSU.AI secured €2.5M funding led by Brighteye Ventures, a leading European Edtech VC along with participation from its existing investors and Skype co-founder Toivo Annus. This investment comes after the €1.7M funding it secured from Runa Capital, Sistema_VC, and Ventech last year.
GOSU is an AI-driven video coach, which provides personalised, AI-driven tools and guidance that enable gamers to 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.
DappRadar
Founder/s: Dragos Dunica, Skirmantas Januskas
Founded year: 2018
Total funding: €2.1M
DappRadar, a Kaunas-based leading global platform involved in the discovery and analysis of blockchain-based decentralised applications (DAPPS) had raised $2.33M (nearly €2.1M) funding last year. The investment round was led by Naspers, a global internet group and one of the largest global tech investors.
Dapps are applications that run with open source code on peer-to-peer computer networks via blockchain. It tracks over 9,000 DAPPS across multiple blockchains such as EOS, TRON, and Ehtereum. It is ranked based on metrics such as daily volume, daily users, and plans to expand as well.
ZitiCity
Founder/s: Karolis Januškas, Laimonas Noreikas, Vytautas Noreika
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: €2.6M
ZitiCity, a last-mile delivery startup bagged €2.2M seed funding in a round led by NordicNinja, a VC backed by Japanese companies such as Panasonic, Omron, Honda and JBIC. The other investors that took part in the funding round include Practica Capital, Superhero Capital VC, StartupWiseGuys, and Superangel VC.
The urban logistics platform ZitiCity empowers local business owners to compete with Amazon by providing affordable same-day deliveries. With an on-demand solution, local restaurants and e-shops can optimise and distribute deliveries in real-time sans usual distribution centres and high commission fees.
Stock photo from Kittyfly/Shutterstock
