Tech startups weekly: Vegan frozen meal home delivery, Adyen payments to chat and corporate funding

The European tech startup ecosystem has started focusing on growth and expansion. With this intention, several ambitious tech startups have secured funding to help them take their business to the next level.

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.

Personalised vitamin subscription box

Paris-based healthtech startup Cuure has raised a funding of €1.8 million from Newfund Ventures and Kima Ventures. This investment comes at a time when personal health as well as immunity is a priority for everyone and personalised healthcare is more accessible. Cuure will use the fresh fund to expand its consumer base from France to Europe with a major focus on Western Europe.

Founded in 2019 by Hugo Facchin and Jules Marcilhacy, Cuure provides personalised food supplements via a monthly subscription. Users have to answer an online questionnaire and get 30 sachets each of 2 to 8 food supplements to be taken everyday. The startup’s unique aspect is its personalisation aspect and users can cancel the subscription at any given time.

Vegan frozen meal home delivery

Planty, a UK startup that delivers a vegan frozen meal home to their customers’ doorsteps has bagged €180K in the first seed investment round led by Veg Capital and Mighty Pea, Native Snacks, and One Planet Pizza that are a part of Veg Capital’s portfolio. Other investors to take part in the funding round are Mighty Pea, Native Snacks, and One Planet Pizza. Planty will use the fresh fund to execute its production roadmap and accelerate the growth of its social and environmental mission.

Planty was established in 2019 by Andrea Cavallo, Ali Sheehan-Dare and Joseph Lovell. Since its debut, it brings a modern-day twist to frozen meals. The startup began with a focus on London and has expanded to the rest of the UK after attracting well-known plant-based enthusiasts. The company intends to expand its range of meals along with exciting partnerships.

Decentralised marketing infrastructure

Infosum based out of Basingstoke raised €12.7 million series A funding round led by Upfront Ventures and IA Ventures along with support from strategic partners including Akamai, Ascential, Experian, AT&T’s Xandr and ITV. Infosum will use the investment to accelerate its expansion across Europe and North America. Also, it welcomes Brain Lesser as its Executive Chairman to increase its presence in North America.

Founded in 2016 by Nick Halstead, Infosum has built one of the world’s first decentralised marketing infrastructures. It enables companies of all sizes and industries to collaborate across first and second-party dara sets in order to create a superior customer experience. Its privacy-first soution lets leading brands, enterprises and broadcasters work seamlessly on first-party marketing programmes without compromising on consumer data privacy.

Direct mail and corporate gifting software platform

Reachdesk, a London-based direct mail and corporate gifting software platform meant for B2B companies has secured €5 million funding led by Five Elms Capital. The startup plans to use the fund to invest in more customer service and product innovation. Also, it intends to expand its team across Europe, the US, and Asia Pacific and invest in a sustainable approach to gifting and direct mail.

Established in 2018 by Alex Olley, Meelan Radia, Jay Radia and Alex Santos, Reachdesk lets sales and marketing professionals to create, manage, scale and measure the ROI of their gifting and direct mail campaigns in a single place. This is possible by integrating offline channels to the existing marketing tech stack of the company.

Launch of privacy blockchain

Amsterdam-based fintech scaleup Dusk Network has raised over €835K from iFinex Inc. This collaboration has resulted in a way to create a regulated Security Token exchange. This new collaboration comes at a time when DeFi or Decentralised Finance is the trend. And, it lets Dusk Network to take the expertise and network of iFinex to boost the launch of its privacy blockchain for financial markets and develop it further.

Founded in 2018, Dusk Network operates with the mission to enable enterprises of any size to collaborate at scale, meet compliance requirements, and make sure that personal and transaction details are confidential. Its blockchain is used by companies to issue tokens, trade and collaborate via smart contracts.

Organisational tool for families

French tech startup Coot has secured €3.7 million from a family office and Bpifrance. Besides the funding round, the company has been rebranded Share(d). The fresh investment and its new name will help the company expand across France and beyond and add an international dimension to its project. It aims to expand to Germany in 2021 and intends to translate the application into more languages in the future. Also, the startup will expand to target various family structures too.

Share(d) has been established by Anthony Amouyal in 2017 to simplify family organisation. The company helps separated and blended families stay organised. Also, it avoids disjointed multi-channel communications across post-it notes, email, and WhatsApp. Important information such as contact details of doctors, health insurance cards and other administrative documents can be integrated.

AI solution for pharmaceutical companies

German startup Semalytix has bagged a €4.3 million Series A funding round led by btov Partners along with participation from existing investor Fly Ventures and a slew of unnamed angels. The company intends to expand to deal with more diseases for a wide range of applications.

Semalytix was founded in 2015 by Janik Jaskolski, Matthias Hartung, Philipp Cimiano, and Roman Klinger is an AI solution that supports pharmaceutical companies becoming more customer-focused. It has gathered one billion patient voices for its flagship product Pharos Suite. It is a research tool that collates, processes and cleans up several millions of social media and forum posts and CRM system records.

Adyen and LiveChat Service bring payments to chats

Dutch fintech unicorn Adyen and LiveChat Service have signed a global partnership for conversational commerce. Both companies intend to bring ultimate customer experience to the market. As there are rapid advancements in conversational commerce towards ultimate customer experience, both companies have decided to merge their products and bring payments and conversations together.

With this collaboration, it is possible to pay directly within a conversation irrespective of the contact channel that is used. LiveChat Service’s communication platform (CPAAS) links all significant contact channels under Conversation24.com, its new name.

Main image picture credits: Planty