Top deals seen in Central and Eastern Europe in July
Here is my list of some interesting deals from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), seen in July. Often overlooked by big US and Western European investors, the region offers many good deals, at much cheaper valuations compared to the US market.
(I work with a number of good young companies based in CEE that seek pre-seed, seed, series A funding. Ping me if you are a hungry investor with cash)
Ukraine is becoming hot for investors, but still under-invested — Ukrainian VC market totalled $11 million in the first six months of 2015. See this table, gathered by UVCA and UAngel, local VC and angels associations.
Russia’s Target Ventures announced last month the opening of an office in San Francisco. The fund’s first US investment went to Prosper, a leading US peer-to-peer lending marketplace, which received $13 million, as reported by Russian tech blog Rusbase.
Lithuanian Practica Capital has invested €200,000 in the new fashion platform Newstory, accelerated in Startup.lt. Newstory is a fashion and style platform for contemporary woman who want to look stylish and to be noticeable always and everywhere. Currently, the company works in cooperation with more than 40 brands, with Italian designers comprising 70% of these partnerships
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich continues to invest in Israel. Israeli Startup Anyclip Media, which has developed a content marketing platform for distributing premium branded video, announced it has completed a $21 million funding round. Leading participants included new investors Ervington Investments, a fund owned by Abramovich, and Limelight Networks (LLNW), a global digital content delivery company. Current shareholders Jerusalem Venture Partners and GTI also participated in the round along with other investors Bob Pittman and Mickey Schulhof.
Latvia-based Adaplab has attracted its first investment of €50,000. Adaplab develops new generation software products for industrial controllers with self-tuning function in oil, gas and wind farm industries. Key advantages are self-tuning function that works even under intensive external disturbances, in real time and without personnel assistance. After successful yard tests in oil drilling process (the technology worked 3X faster and 2X more efficient than competing solution), Adaplab has already signed first partnership agreement with oil drilling company from the US to develop first software product for their equipment. There are talks with several other companies in Oil&Gas Industry.
Czech antivirus company Avast has acquired Remotium, a virtual mobile infrastructure startup. Avast has a range of consumer and business security and antivirus software for Windows and OS X, but up to this point their mobile products have all been consumer-oriented. Acquiring Remotium is their major foray into enterprise mobility management. Remotium is a Silicon Valley-based startup founded by former security researchers in 2012. Remotium had early customers in Japanese manufacturing, and became generally available last year.
First investment of Macedonian business angels has gone to WeLrn, an online marketplace for teaching and learning real-world skills through short video courses. Our interactive platform is built to encourage social learning and create a highly engaging environment. We are focused only on making the experience of online learning more enjoyable.
Rakuten, a Japanese ecommerce and internet company, has acquired a 100% stake in the Estonian-founded fit preference specialist, Fits.me. Rakuten said it expects the tech startup to further strengthen its ecommerce offerings and marketing solutions by providing a greater personalisation of the retail experience for shoppers.
Originally published at www.eu-startups.com on August 4, 2015.
