Undoubtedly, there has been an increase in funding activities across Europe as the tech startup ecosystem here seems to be eager to pick up the slack after the COVID slump. Several tech startups have started focusing on growing and taking their business to the next level. Many of these companies have started hiring fresh talent and forging strategic partnerships.
European tech startups weekly
As a part of a weekly roundup, here is a list of some of the most important tech startups that have hit the headlines in Europe this week.
Productivity, collaboration tools for healthcare industry
Based out of Belgium, Awell Health bagged £1.9M (nearly €2M) funding from LocalGlobe and Moonfire, London-based investors. With this investment, the startup will bolster its collaboration and productivity tools for the healthcare industry. This is crucial, especially during this COVID-19 crisis, as faster updating and easier implementation of patient guidelines is a priority.
Founded in 2018 by Thomas Vande Casteele, Awell Health enables healthcare organisations to create, implement, and update care pathways continuously to improve patient outcomes. The company believes that it is essential to focus on reorganising paper-based and disjointed processes. Traditionally, healthcare organisations have used text-based PDFs to create clinical protocols and care pathways and this slows down the practice.
In-play ad startup
London-based in-play ad and game monetisation startup Admix secured an additional $1.5M (nearly €1.3M) as a part of its Series A funding round. This round comes just three months after the initial funding of $7M (nearly €6.02M) funding. This investment comes from Marcus Segal, the ex-COO of Zynga Studios and Nigel Morris, the ex-CEO of Dentsu Aegis in addition to a number of unnamed executives in the gaming and advertising industry.
This investment will be used to accelerate the development of Admix’s stack for game publishers and grow its team by the end of this year. Established by Joe Bachle-Morris, Mohammed Alisrawi, and Samuel Huber in 2017, Admix is a monetisation platform for game developers enabling non-intrusive, programmatic product placements within their content.
SaaS and marketplace VC debuts €100M fund
Germany-based Point Nine, a VC firm focused on Europe and US, has closed a new €100M (essentially €99,999,999) seed funding dubbed P9 V. Since its debut in 2011, this is the fifth fund closed by the VC firm. Point Nine will invest between €500k and €2.5M per startup and take part in Series A funding of all the startups it funds.
The firm was founded by Christoph Janz, Kolja Hebenstreit, Lukasz Gadowski, and Pawel Chudzinski. It will deploy the fresh capital to bring two new partners – Louis Coppey and Ricardo Sequerra Amram. To date, the company has invested in over 100 startups across 28 countries and is an early-stage investor in Delivery Hero, Revolut, Brainly, DocPlanner and more.
Solution to supercharge 5G communications
AccelerComm, a semiconductor research and IP development company and Southampton University spinout has raised £5.8M (nearly €M) Series A funding from IQ Capital, along with participation from previous investors such as IP Group and Bloc Ventures, in order to scale its IP tech business.
AccelerComm debuted in 2016 by University of Southampton professor Rob Maunder. The startup reportedly helps telcos, OEMs and equipment vendors to supercharge 5G satellite and other wireless communications with digital signal processing that reduces latency and increases spectrum efficiency.
Conversational AI for businesses
Danish startup BotXO has pocketed €4M funding in a round led by Seed Capital and The Danish Growth Fund. The investment will be used to bolster conversational AI tech for businesses. BotXO founded in 2017 by Henrik Fabrin in Copenhagen aims to help its customers to reap the benefits of the conversational web as fast as possible.
This startup’s no-code platform enables businesses of all sizes, especially e-commerce companies, to use conversational AI and machine learning to speed up their growth and engage with customers in a more efficient manner. BotXO claims a database of over 24,000 pre-made, industry-specific sentences and over 1 billion variations in a wide range of languages.
European platform for home and garden projects
In a recent development, 3i Group has invested in German startup GartenHaus to build the leading European platform for home and garden projects. The 3i Group announced that it will invest £60M (nearly €65.6M) for a majority stake in A-Z GartenHaus, which is an online leader in garden homes, saunas, and sheds in the DACH region. Also, the management team and board of GartenHaus will invest to become shareholders.
Founded in 2002 by Sebastian Arendt, the German startup offers sheds, garden houses, terraces, carports, and other home and garden related products.
French VC gets new fund and faces
Daphni, a French VC investor has secured its third fund that brings the overall assets to $350M. Also, it signals some notable high-profile departures. It has announced that the new fund is called Yellow and is worth $100M (nearly €86M). Daphni is also working towards adding another $50M to the fund and invest in nearly 30 projects and invest between $1M and $5M.
Notably, Yellow is backed by corporations such as Bouygues and Accord, business angels – billionaire telecoms titan Xavier Niel, Jacques-Antoine Granjon of Veepee, and Romain Niccoli of Criteo. Even the startups that were backed by Daphni in the past such as Devialet and Back Market have invested in this fund.
UK fintech reports annual revenue growth
TransferWise, a UK fintech scaleup that handles over £4M (nearly €4.38M) in cross-border payments each month from over 8 million customers has announced its results for the previous financial year. As per the report, it has reported a 70% growth in revenue reaching £302.6M (nearly €331M) and a net profit of £21.3M (nearly €23.3M) for the financial year that ended in March 2020.
Established by Taavet Hinrikus and Kristo Käärmann in 2011, TransferWise has launched new products across the US, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East in 2019. The company supports 2500 currency routes and 54 currencies on the whole. In July 2020, when TransferWise launched its secondary share sale, it reached a $5B (€5.47B) valuation.
Main image picture credits: TransferWise
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