Budapest Letters #42
👋 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 #42, 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: ✍️ Vercom, a Polish cloud communication platform, acquires MailerLite, a fellow CEE startup, for €85.3 million ✍️ Spotawheel, Eurora, Symmetrical.ai and Aerones raised 💶 ✍️ Lithuania’s GoRamp aims to make manual repetative work of freight companies obsolete ✍️ Next Earth, a metaverse project founded by Hungarians, has super huge ambitions to grow
🔥 Story of the Week
Vercom, a cloud communication platform from 🇵🇱, has acquired marketing automation startup MailerLite from 🇱🇹 for €85.3 million. A sweet intra-CEE deal with a possible global impact. According to estimates, the cloud com market could reach ca. €22B in the upcoming few years as more and more businesses move to the cloud so with this move Vercom, an already a strong player in the field, can easily take on international bigwigs, like Twilio and Sinch.
Show Me Da 💶
👏 Spotawheel, a used car platform from 🇬🇷, raised €100M, led by famous local VC firm VentureFriends, with participation from UNIQA Ventures (🇦🇹), FJ Labs (🇺🇸), Rockaway Ventures (🇨🇿) and others. The startup, that is riding high thanks to the used car boom in CEE, will use the fresh funding to expand within the EU.
👏 Eurora, an e-commerce compliance platform from 🇪🇪, bagged €38M, led by Connected Capital (🇳🇱), with participation from well known local VC firms Change Ventures and Equity United. The company, that provides an AI/ML-based platform automating tax, compliance and customs services for e-com businesses, will use the money for international expansion and widening its product offering.
👏 Symmetrical.ai, a payroll startup from 🇵🇱, snatched €17.5M, led by Target Global (🇺🇸), with participation from a sleuth of investors, including Partech, a fellow US VC fund, and locals Market One Capital and Inovo. The startup, that aims “to enable any company to hire and pay anyone in the world via just two API calls”, will use the funding to expand in Europe and the US, and grow its team.
👏 Aerones, a robotics startup from 🇱🇻, received €7.5M, led by Future Positive Capital (🇫🇷), with participation from existing investors, including Change Ventures, the Baltic focused 🇪🇪 VC fund. The company, that builds robots that can be used in inspecting wind turbines, will use the fresh funding to fine-tune its tech.
👏 Additional investment news that you should know about:
Alphamoon, a document automation platform from 🇵🇱, raised €2.1M from Sunfish Partners and Satus Starter; more on this via Tech.eu
GoRamp, a logistics startup from 🇱🇹, bagged €1.5M; more via ArcticStartup
DriveX, a vehicle inspection startup from 🇪🇪, snatched €948k from a group of investors, including Czechia’s Depo Ventures; more via ArcticStartup
Startup Wise Guys, a famed startup accelerator and early-stage VC fund very active in CEE, will enter Romania; more on this via The Recursive
Congrats to all teams on the fresh raises!
🚨 Startup Alert
This week’s alert is on GoRamp, a logistic startup from 🇱🇹, that just raised 💶 as noted above. The company, founded in 2017 by Jevgenij Polonis, Marius Repecka and Ugnė Palionytė, helps manufacturing companies avoid manual repetitive tasks (e.g. sending e-mails in order to agree with transportation companies regarding prices, making phone calls for getting feedback on truck numbers and their arrival times, etc.). GoRamp is currently active in 18 countries in Europe and oversees (e.g. Australia) and works with many big corporate names, like Pfizer.
The startup offers its clients two core products: Dock Scheduling and Transport Management System. The former provides users with a flexible dock scheduling software, helping companies eliminate queues, automate truck arrivals & communication. While the latter provides a cloud-based, end-to-end shipment management software with real-time updates and coordinated communications.
🧠 Food
Next Earth, a popular metaverse platform built by 🇭🇺 founding team, announced a $12.5M strategic investment in Limitless, a global blockchain studio. The fresh money will support Limitless’s aim of creating, on the one hand, a $60M venture fund (“Limitless Capital”) that will invest in startups interested in joining Next Earth. On the other hand, it will also launch an API to help projects join Next Earth (“Limitless Network”). On tops, it was announced that the company will try to offer its technology for large companies looking to build their own metaverses.
Next Earth, by the way, is known because the startup created a replica of the earth with about 5 trillion tiles and minted NFTs to let users buy pieces of virtual land. Up until now the project attracted ca. 230k registered users, 45k landowners and $10+ million in revenue. So the hype is real and the company is going 🚀
More on the above via Next Earth’s YT channel here:
Big announcement. Big ambition. But it will be interesting to see how it progresses; especially, since the metaverse market is getting very crowded.