October closed with 32.11 millions of euro invested in startups, in a total of 17 Spanish public operations, the amounts of two of which have not been made official. This figure puts the accumulated investment in technology so far in 2019 at 733.65 millions of euro, slightly less than the figure for 2018 at the end of the same month (€ 767 M), not including the round of Letgo.
The number of operations in 2019 is 160 compared to 173 in 2018, very similar figures both in millions of Euro and in number of operations. It will be difficult to exceed the barrier of one billion Euro at the end of this year, so the accumulated total will be very similar to that of last year. Regarding the main rounds, there are mainly two operations that exceed 5 million Euro. The most important was Ravenpack, which closed a 9 million Euro deal thanks to the GP Bullhound and Whisbi fund, which announced on October 11 a 5 million Euro deal led by Cipio Partners. Other significant rounds in October that exceeded one million Euro were Situm (3M€), World Mastery (3M€) and ID Finance, Fundsfy and Venvirotech, all with operations of 2M€.
PUBLIC OPERATIONS
RavenPack: the technology company RavenPack has received 10 million dollars (9.01 million Euro) from GP Bullhound, an investment that will be used for two main objectives: to grow in Asian and to enter other sectors beyond financial services. RavenPack’s data analysis platform is used by leading hedge funds and fund managers globally. This platform uses artificial intelligence to create sentiment indicators from news and social networks. These in turn connect to the trading systems of financial institutions.
Whisbi: the startup has closed a Series B round of 5 million Euro led by the fund Cipio Partners, which joins other investors of the Catalan firm such as Active & BDMI. Whisbi has developed a conversational sales platform aimed at large companies in order to capture, qualify and convert potential customers for companies that wish to increase their sales.
World Mastery: edtech World Mastery has raised a 3 million Euro Series A round in an operation led by Nauta Capital, the European venture capital fund. The startup covers the learning needs of both professionals and teachers, as well as non-academic teaching centers, thus providing access to high quality specialized courses taught by teachers in different categories such as tennis, basketball, dance, yoga, fitness, cooking or hairdressing. Through the World Mastery platform, clients have access to tools and videos that enhance their educational development. International experts, such as Toni Nadal, Božidar Maljkovi, and Kimble, endorse and bet on this content. “We feel fortunate to create products and services that promote high quality education as a key to a better world”, explained Aniol Brosa, co-founder and CEO of World Mastery.
Situm: the interior monitoring, location and navigation technology company has raised 3 million Euro. The capital injection will allow the company to accelerate its growth and undertake its international expansion plan. This round was led by Swanlaab Venture Factory, a Spanish Israeli management company with offices in Madrid and Tel-Aviv, together with Prosegur Tech Ventures, Prosegur Corporate Venture Capital, the world’s leading security company. Likewise, Amadeus, Unirisco and Xesgalicia – dependent on the Consellería de Economía, Emprego e Industria de la Xunta de Galicia – also participated.
Fundsfy: the neobank created for investors, has closed its first round of investment worth 2.2 million Euro. The operation coincides with its commercial launch and with an exit promotion that includes three months free for the first 5,000 users who register on its platform. The company was born with the philosophy of facilitating access to investment services and neobanking from a single application.
ID Finance: the company, which offers financial services to people who do not have access to banking services, has closed a financing round of 2 million Euro in one week. This fintech, which is based in Barcelona and operates throughout Europe and Latin America, raised more than 1.8 million Euro in collective financing, specifically from 150 investors, in a matter of minutes, after the launch of its campaign on Crowdcube. At the same time, amid strong demand from investors, it obtained two million Euro in less than a week.
VEnvirotech: the biotech startup, which produces biodegradable bioplastic from organic waste, has closed an investment round of more than 2 million Euro, most of which was contributed by the family office of the Gassó family (former owners of Gaes). The operation, which closed last August, will allow the start-up of a 3,100 square meter production plant in Santa Perpètua de la Mogoda, in the province of Barcelona.
Outvise: Barcelona’s Outvise startup is in a moment of transition after raising a financing round of 1.2 million Euro. The platform, which has been active for three years, had to go through a previous period of exploration and validation of the concept before launching the project in 2016. During the last closed year Outvise reached a gross turnover of 5 million in 2018 with more than 10,000 working days delivered that same year with the prospect of an additional 25% growth in 2019.
Mondobets: the first online betting house with a professional fantasy football league, has closed a financing round of more than 1 million Euro (€1,040,688) thanks to the contribution of 159 investors through Fellow Funders. With this operation, the alternative online financing platform has managed to finance three projects with rounds exceeding one million Euro so far this year. No easy feat if we bear in mind that these platforms are still a great unknown to thousands of investors today, the company explains.
In all of them they have had contributions ranging from 300 Euro by small retail investors, to clips of more than 100,000 Euro by qualified reference investors.
ApetEat: ApetEat and its office catering service has closed a 1 million Euro round of financing led by the Big Sur Ventures and All Iron Ventures investment funds. Both funds join the list of investors of this startup, which has been selected to participate in Lanzadera, the accelerator of the owner of Mercadona, Juan Roig. With the recent €1M injection, the startup and its online business lunch service, known as Lunch As A Benefit, it wants to reinforce its expansion and growth strategy:
“We want to establish ourselves in the Spanish market and invest in talent, strengthen our sales and technology teams, and continue to improve a product that we think still has a long way to go,” said Pablo Samaranch, co-founder of ApetEat.
Cledara: has raised a total of 835,000 Euro in a round of funding thanks to the investment of agents such as Techstars and Chris Adelsbach. This round will be aimed at helping companies manage their SaaS spending. The startup develops software that allows companies to track and manage the use and expense of SaaS, including a detailed analysis to help understand if the money is spent correctly. Prior to the funding round, Cledara had the support of the strategic partnership between Anthemis and BBVA.
Acqustic: the startup that allows emerging musicians to boost their musical career, has closed an investment round of 650,000 Euro in which several VCs were added such as Toushka Capital, Lanai Partners or BBooster Ventures. Family offices such as Acom Ventures, which invested in Badi, the record label Brisa Records or the music business school International Music Business School, also participated in this round. As well as business angels from the IESE forum, ESADE and EAE Invierte. From the all-in-one application, users can find more than 150 concert offers per month, upload their music to the main streaming platforms such as Spotify and legally invoice all their performances.
Erudit AI: the artificial intelligence startup has obtained 500,000 Euro of seed funding in its first 3 months of existence thanks to The Venture City, Lontananza Investments and Business Angels. The company, incorporated in the United States and headquartered in Madrid, is now part of The Venture City’s Growth program. Its SaaS makes it possible to manage the well-being of large workforces in real time. Thanks to its own neural networks, it collects the information that employees generate during the working day, transforming this data into knowledge about their emotional state and personality.
Happybox: the Spanish startup focused on the use of artificial intelligence technology and chatbots for the last mile, has closed an investment round of 400,000 Euro through Crowdcube. The investment will be used to accelerate the growth of Happy Box focusing on four pillars: continuing to improve its software through Artificial Intelligence technology, hiring new strategic profiles, opening new international markets and intensifying its marketing work. 226 investors of 32 nationalities participated in the financing round.
Neki: this project raised a total of 230,812 Euro in its last round of funding. At the beginning of the month the startup set the objective of reaching 180,000 Euro, an amount that has been surpassed thanks to the participation of Ship2B and the European Investment Fund through Equity4Good, and its contribution of 50,000 Euro. The round was closed through Startupxplore and had a total of 97 investors who have invested with a minimum ticket of 1,000 Euro.