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Despite the difficult context created by the pandemic, the startups in the field of Technology in Romania continue to grow – they managed to attract capital this year as well. More precisely, the Romanian start-ups attracted in the first six months of the year investments of 82.2 million euros, shows gathered by Activize regarding the financing of the young business via Venture Capital funds. The authors of the report note that, if this trend continues, the current year could be the best so far for tech startups in terms of attracting funding.
In the first six months of the year, there were 60 rounds of investments in Romanian startups, but also a series of investments in foreign startups that have Romanian founders who live abroad. Specifically, the Activize report, based on public announcements, shows that the total volume of investment capital raised during this period was about 82.2 million euros, in 50 rounds of investments. The amount refers to startups in Romania or those which have the largest number of employees located in Romania. The figure increases to 878.4 million euros when foreign startups with Romanian founders are taken into account.
Most of the investments were related to companies in Bucharest, only ten of the big businesses taking place in Cluj, Timișoara or Iași.
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Investments made in technology startups in Romania are on an upward trend: in 2019, the authors of the report followed 70 financing offers totaling 40 million euros, in the first 6 months of 2020 30 offers totaling 20 million euros have also been identified. In the first half of 2021, 50 offers worth 82.2 million euros were identified.
The unicorn founded in Romania, UiPath, is, of course, mentioned in the report: before the listing on New York it attracted 750 million dollars from investors such as Alkeon Capital, Coatue, Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, IVP, Sequoia, Tiger Global .
Some of the most important investments mentioned in the Activize report:
- FintechOS, a global technology provider for banks, insurance companies and financial services companies, has attracted $ 60 million in funding. The round was led by Draper Esprit.
- SeedBlink crowdfunding platform completes $ 3 million round of Series A funding
- Druid, a startup specializing in the development of virtual assistants (chatbots), raised $ 2.5 million in a funding round led by GapMinder VC, completed by Early Game Ventures.
- Questo, an exploration game platform, attracted $ 1.5 million in a round led by Early Game Ventures, with the participation of Sparking Capital.
- Bunnyshell, which specializes in developing technologies for managing cloud infrastructure, raised $ 1.1 million in an investment round led by Early Game Ventures /
In the first part of the year, startups with at least one Romanian co-founder living abroad raised a total of approximately 242.8 million euros in venture capital, the report shows. Among them is the American company Databricks, which has among its founders two Romanian IT specialists and has obtained a financing of 1 billion dollars, with the participation of Google Ventures, Amazon and Microsoft. Capsida Biotherapeutics Inc., an American biotechnology company, received $ 140 million in funding from two venture capital firms and the pharmaceutical group AbbVie. The startup’s solution is based on research conducted at Caltech by Romanian professor Viviana Gradinaru. Chili Piper, a programming platform (SaaS) for sales teams, has raised $ 33 million in a round led by Tiger Global.
The authors of the Activize report note that, if this trend continues, this year could be the best for tech startups for attracting funding.
Translated from Romanian by Service For Life S.R.L