April ends with €37M obtained from a total of 20 public operations in Spain

April Investments
  • With this amount, the cumulative figure for 2020 is €234 million
  • KFund is the most active Spanish fund of the month in terms of number of investments, announcing participation in the Factorial, Appentra and Frontity rounds.

April substantially improves on the bad figures from March and the month closes with 36.94 million Euro invested in startups in Spain in a total of 20 public operations, far exceeding the 10.7 million Euro of the previous month, the worst accumulated data of the last four years. With this accumulated amount of 2020 is 234 million, a hopeful figure but one that the economic consequences of COVID19 could slow down investment in Spanish startups in the coming months.

If we compare the cumulative figure for the first quarter of 2020 (234 million Euro) with the first quarter of last year (365.32 million), there is not a great difference (131 million), but it seems that this year investment could fall somewhat compared to the last three years, which will depend in part on the major investment rounds that may occur in the second half of the year. 2020 exceeds the number of public operations (75) that accumulated at the end of April 58 operations, a positive figure for the future.

Factorial is the operation that stands out in April, closing a Series A of 15 million Euro led by Venture Capital CRV, Creandum, Point Nine Capital and K-Fund. Iñaki Arrola and Karina Szpilka’s fund is the most active Spanish fund in terms of number of investments as they announced their participation in the Factorial, Appentra and Frontity rounds.

INVESTMENTS

Factorial: the tool for automating Human Resources processes, has just announced the closing of a 15 million Euro Series A round, the third in its history since it started its activities at the end of 2016. With this operation, Factorial revolutionizes the Human Resources sector and is at the head of the so-called HR Tech– technology for HR management–after increasing its turnover eightfold in 2019.

Agile Content: the software company for the management of audiovisual content based in Barcelona, has closed an agreement with its core shareholders for a convertible loan for 7 million Euro and a six-year term. The technology company, which is listed on the Alternative Stock Market (MAB), thus obtains a buffer to reinforce its organic growth and face possible purchase operations of other companies.

Anyverse: Next Limit completed a €3 million round for its Anyverse business line. The round was led by two privately held Spanish companies with a focus on high technology: Bullnet Capital and Inveready. Thanks to this capital injection the company will further boost its technological development and ensure an unrivaled positioning in the advanced autonomous systems sector.

Pulmobiotics: a preclinical company that uses synthetic biology to develop new treatments and vaccines for various types of lung diseases, has obtained 2 million Euro in initial capital from Invivo Ventures. Based in Barcelona, the company is one of the leading biomedical venture capital firms in Spain.

Fluzo: the startup that wants to use fingerprinting audio technology to improve cross-media advertising and media consumption research, announced the closing of a €1.25 million investment round. Adara Ventures led the round with the participation of Sabadell Venture Capital, the venture capital unit of Banco Sabadell.

Frontity: a platform that allows developers to create WordPress websites using React, announced the closing of a 1 million Euro funding round led by the venture capital fund K Fund and Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. Well-known business angels from the Spanish startup ecosystem have also participated in the operation.

Tranxfer: the company in the cybersecurity sector received 1 million Euro in 2020. This was in order to expand its business model internationally and to implement a plan to turn the company into a benchmark in the market for secure corporate transfer tools. Based on meeting the needs of sending and receiving files safely, the company was created in 2013 under the chair of Miguel Planas, also chairman of Iris Venture Building.

Taxdown: the Spanish startup that has created an intelligent solution that enables taxpayers to process their income in a simple and rigorous manner obtained a total of €700,000 in its seed financing round led by international business angels such as Vladimir Ristanovic and James Argalas, directors of Axos Financial, Inc. and Axos Bank and Baldomero Falcones, former chairman of MasterCard, former chairman and former CEO of FCC and former COO of Banco Santander.

Meyo: the startup that has just launched a virtual assistant to improve consumer habits has received an injection of nearly €600,000 through a financing round involving private investors and the Chousa family, former owners of the Galician group Ingapan.

Saurus Capital:  in one week and amid the coronavirus crisis, it obtained €553,000 from 750 investors around the world (35.25% of them from Spain) for the development of the legal and technological infrastructure of its future digital bank.

Kymatio: the cybersecurity startup that identifies, analyzes, evaluates and provides everything necessary to deal with internal risks of human origin related to information security, closed a round of investment of €500,000 through The Crowd Angel with the support of Wayra Spain and private business angels. This SaaS enables the prevention of risk situations and cyber threats for employees.

Fivecomm: Global Omnium, through its corporate venturing vehicle GoHub Ventures, has announced the investment of €450,000 in the Valencian startup Fivecomm, which specializes in 5G technology applied to the industrial sector. To make 5G use cases in industries a reality, Fivecomm integrates hardware and software applying its solution for mobile robotics, extreme connectivity in industrial environments, connected cars and the broadcasting and remote production of multimedia content.

CounterGrogWise: CounterGrogWise, the startup specialized in the development of applications combining BigData and Artificial Intelligence, closed a seed capital round valued at €400,000 and promoted through Friends, Family & Fools.

Kubbo: the provider of next day and same day fulfillment and delivery services for e-commerce, has closed its first round of funding worth €266,000. The transaction was led by a group of investors led by Aurorial, the IT and electronics eCommerce venture capital fund PcComponentes.

Microbial Biosystems: BeAble Capital, a leading Deep Science Venture in Spain, has invested in research and science to respond to the major challenges facing the world; therefore, it has invested €165,000 in the new technology developed by Microbial Biosystems, which is investigating a sustainable alternative to plastic obtained from oil.

Tucuvi: in 36 hours, Tucuvi closed an investment round of €160,000. The round was led by the Fondo Bolsa Social Impacto FESE, along with another 66 investors who bet on the project. This is the first round selected from the Impact Investment call to address the coronavirus, an initiative of the Social Stock Exchange with the intention of promoting startups that develop solutions to alleviate the COVID-19 crisis.

Indicate Solutions and Airlite Comfort: BerriUp selected the two winning projects in the tenth call for proposals of its startup acceleration program: Indicate Solutions and Airlite Comfort. The two innovative initiatives, based in Guipúzkoa, were among the six finalists chosen from a total of 123 proposals received. BerriUp’s acceleration program provides the selected projects with €50,000 in exchange for 10% of the startup and a four-month program of personalized support.

Hotelmize: Hotelmize, a Big Data and machine learning company focused on the B2B tourism sector, has increased its investment in order to expand its services, accelerate the company’s growth and begin its expansion into the Asian tourism market. The Series B financing round was led by Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund and Brilliance Ventures, based in Israel.