Budapest Letters #32
👋 Hi All! Great to have you back. This is Budapest Letters, my newsletter covering startup and small business stories from the CEE region, or interesting developments that might have something to do with this part of Europe. Hope you will enjoy it!
Before we jump into edition #32, big shout out to our new subscribers, good to have you here. And one more thing before we roll, if you like what you read, subscribe + share 🙏
Cheers, Aron
📢 TL;DR
Top stories this week: ✍️ Contra, a new professional network for freelancers with a Lithuanian co-founder, won a Golden Kitty award ✍️ Veriff, Skeleton Technologies, Infermedica and Tuum raised 💵 ✍️ Hungary’s Benker set to launch Europe’s first licensed blockchain neobank in Lithuania ✍️ Digital Poland Foundation published its annual CEE Digital Champions list
🔥 Story of the Week
Contra, a professional network for freelancers, was named “Creator Tool of the Year” at the Golden Kitty Awards 2021, an annual competition run by Product Hunt, the famed tech tool discovery site. This is a big thing and congrats to Gajus Kuizinas (🇱🇹, co-founder) and the team because this achievement might very well result in accelerated popularity, i.e. boosting revenues and client numbers.
Btw, Contra’s success is similar to that of Craft Docs (🇭🇺), a fellow CEE startup, which was named Mac App of the Year in last years App Store Awards.
I strongly believe that these wins are important, not only for respective founders and their teams, but also for the wider CEE ecosystem. International successes such as these can prove to aspiring local founders that they should dream big. And if they do, regardless of where they are based, cool things can happen.
Show Me Da 💶
👏 Veriff, an online identity verification startup from 🇪🇪, received ca. €89M, led by Tiger Global (🇧🇬) and Alkeon Capital, with participation from existing investors IVP and Accel, all big time 🇺🇸 investors. The startup, that provides online identity verification service for organisations and which is now a certified tech unicorn, will use the fresh funding for global expansion and fine-tuning of its product.
👏 Skeleton Technologies, a supercapacitor maker from 🇪🇪, bagged €37.6M in extension of its latest funding round (current total: €108M), led by Taavet+Sten. The company, that is developing cutting-edge supercapacitors, will use the money to boost its production capacity and enter new markets.
👏 Infermedica, a healthtech startup from 🇵🇱, snatched €26.8M, led by One Peak (🇬🇧), with participation from earlier investors, like Karma Ventures (🇪🇪), Heal Capital (🇩🇪) and Inovo (🇵🇱). The startup, that offers AI-powered solutions for symptom analysis and patient triage, will use its funding to further develop its product.
👏 Tuum, a fintech startup from 🇪🇪, nabbed €15M, led by Portage Ventures (🇩🇪), with participation from Blackfin Capital (🇫🇷) and Karma Ventures, both existing VCs. The company, that offers its clients (typically banks and fellow fintechs) a modular cloud-agnostic core banking platform, will use the money for expansion.
👏 Additional investment news that you should know about:
Starship Technologies (🇪🇪) bagged €50M from EIB - more here
Wizart (🇧🇾/🇵🇱) nabbed €1.1M, led by Untitled Ventures - more here
Eleven Ventures, a leading South East European VC firm, closed a new €60M fund that it will use to further boost regional startups - more here
HTEC Group (🇷🇸) raised a monster ca. €125M round from Brighton Park Capital late last year that was only announced last week - more info here
🚨 Startup Alert
This week’s alert is on Benker which, according to its founders, will be Europe’s first licensed blockchain neobank when it soon launches in 🇱🇹, thanks to the approval of the Bank of Lithuania. The company obtained an official Electronic Money Institution licence (like Revolut), enabling it to offer bank-like services to users, i.e. payment services, traditional money transfers, SEPA (Single Euro Payment Area) payments, currency exchange services and payment cards.
In addition, thanks to Natrix, its owen hybrid blockchain platform, it promises to gives users more security and control over their personal finances. The founders also announced that, via partnersips, the neobank will offer innovative crypto products, like gold deposited assets. Initial operations will focus on the Baltics.
The company, that has a Hungarian founding team, seems to have some personnel and technological overlaps with Blockben, another Baltic-based and licensed startup with 🇭🇺 founders. The public, pre-registration for using Benker is on the way, hope it will be as legit and revolutionary as its CEO suggests 🤞
🧠 Food
Digital Poland Foundation (DPF) published its annual TOP 100 Digital Champions CEE list which compiles the regions tech companies to watch. DPF clustered these companies into 3 groups (based on their total value), as follows:
Digital Phoenixes: 36 companies with valuations exceeding $1B
Digital Dragons: 25 companies with valuations between $250M - $1B
Digital Wolves: 39 companies with valuations between $100M - $250M
Out of of the above, the total value of Digital Phoenixes constitute over 88% of the total valuation of all other companies in the list. Majority of companies represent e-commerce, media and entertainment, cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions and Fintech. The Baltic countries have the highest saturation of champions (especially 🇪🇪), followed closely by V4 countries (mostly 🇵🇱 and 🇨🇿).
And here is the list itself - nonetheless, check the report, it is great: