Here is my list of some interesting deals from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), seen in August. Often overlooked by big US and Western European investors, the region offers many good deals, at much cheaper valuations compared to the US market.
Galactic Exchange, a big data startup with activities split between Kharkiv (Kharkov), Eastern Ukraine, and Silicon Valley, recently raised a seed funding round. The startup will target biotech and pharmaceutical companies. The negotiation with the Silicon Valley investors took “less than a week,” Galactic Exchange co-founder Konstantin Kladko said. These investors are serial entrepreneurs and investors Mike Maples of Floodgate Capital and Rick Thompson of Signia Ventures.
TeskaLabs, a hi-tech security startup founded in Prague, with operations in London, announced that it has secured €337,000 in a pre-seed funding round, from a mix of private and institutional investors. TeskaLabs, which produces cutting edge enterprise-grade security for mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) applications, is backed bytech accelerators StartupYard Prague, Techstars London, and Credo Ventures, a European venture capital firm. This round of financing will be employed to recruit top technical talent, and expand the company’s research and development in Prague, as well as sales operations in London. Prague, the Central European home to two of the world’s leading security software firms, Avast and AVG, has developed over the past decade into a worldwide leader in the field.
Latvian Swipe has launched to be easier than PayPal and faster than banks. Swipe was the finalist of Rietumu fintech challenge, selected among 16 startups from 7 countries. Swipe is an online payment solution that is as easy as swiping your card. It transfers the money directly to your account and has a built-in convenient invoicing and recurring payment system. As a business, Swipe lets any merchant accept Visa, Mastercard and BankLink payments, even without a webpage. As a customer, you sign up, set up Swipe once and the service handles all the payments for you. Yes, Latvia is an exciting country for startups. Here is why.
Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich continues shopping in Israel. He has invested $10 million in Israeli startup Driveway, which earlier attracted $1.6 million from other Russian investors. Driveway is a robust, smartphone-deployed, cloud-based technology that provides auto insurers with comprehensive insured driving data for better pricing intelligence.
Polish fintech startups are hot. These are the five Polish fintech startups to watch – according to the Polish startup blog Ksup. A few of them seek investors.
