Greece is well known for its royal blue skies, white-painted hill-top towns, crystal waters, traditional gastronomy and rich history, but that’s not all it has to offer. A number of startups have been capitalising on Greece’s island fame, creating business around the tourism industry, including yachting, hotel booking and cultural activities, and quite rightly so. However, there are also a number of fintech, deeptech, agritech, and biotech startups out there, resolving financial management issues, proposing new ways for medical students to learn and helping farmers to increase crop yields.
Since the financial crisis, Greek entrepreneurs have been taking issues into their own hands and growing an inspirational and buzzing startup scene. Today the startup ecosystem is attractive to entrepreneurs from all over Europe, with a low cost of living, low crime rate, a host of success stories, prime location in the cross-roads of Europe and previous investments from major companies like Tesla. Plus, Greece was named the 2018 European Capital of Innovation by the EU, and ranked 11th in the world for Science and Engineering graduates by the Global Innovation Index 2018, showing there is no lack of talent.
Having scouted the horizon for the top early stage startups out there, we analysed growth rate according to aspects like team numbers, funding closed, sector and more. Here are the top promising Greek startups that we expect to see hitting the headlines in 2020 and beyond.
Plum – Plum, founded in 2016, is the AI assistant that boosts your bank balance. After linking your accounts, Plum analyses your income and automatically sets small safe amounts of money aside for you, which can be accessed at any time, or even invested. It can also help you switch your bills for more savings. Security is top priority, with the startup employing bank-grade security and working with the main banks and challengers like Monzo and Revolut. The nifty little bot is also easily accessible by Facebook Messenger, iOS and Android. The team, based in Athens and London, received its last funding of €2.7 million in 2019, to conquer the European market.
BibeCoffee – BibeCoffee, founded in 2018, is turning every professional coffee machine into a smart connected terminal. Using a real time IoT monitoring solution, it can grab data on coffee consumption, and overall suggest changes to reduce revenue loss and brand image. Its easy-to-use platform is streamlining the way distributors, makers and chains work, even automising ordering and giving sales forecasts, and guaranteeing that high quality coffee is always served without compromises. In 2019, the startup, which is based between Greece and the UK, raised a seed round of €400K to take over the industry.
Ferry Hopper – Ferry Hopper, founded in 2016, is bringing island-hopping around Greece to our fingertips. Its intuitive ferry booking platform shows every connection to the 160 Greek islands, so users can compare prices, secure the cheapest fare and grab their ticket quickly before prices go up. It’s the only platform that shows indirect connections to other destinations, and lets users book multiple tickets at once. Now the market leader in Greece, it’s expanding fast to Spain and Italy, and has reached a team of more than 30 people.
Augmenta – Augmenta, founded in 2016, is an agritech startup that helps farmers drive down costs and improve crop performance. Its ‘plug-and-play’ video device uses machine learning to watch tractor movements and help the typical farmer increase their yield up to 15%, reduce the amount of chemical field inputs by up to 20% and increase the quality of his field’s end product by 15%. Whatsmore, its technology operates in real time and “learns” the more it’s used by the farmer. Its team has grown to around 20 people since its launch and has been on our radar for a while. Last year, it raised a second round of funding of €2.3 million to boost its tech further.
Syncbnb – Syncbnb, founded in 2017, is building its business on the booming tourism industry and rental market in Greece. Syncbnb helps vacation rental owners manage their listings on multiple channels like Airbnb, Homeaway, Booking.com, Tripadvisor, and more, overall multiplying their revenue by 2 or even 3 times. The platform offers an all-in-one dashboard, with a calendar synchronisation feature, which employs AI and human quality checks to make sure everything is updated. The Attiki-based team raised its last round of funding in 2019 of €770K, to continue to grow its reach and help more landlords rent 100% of their properties at all times.
MyJobNow – MyJobNow, founded in 2018, is speeding up the hiring of job seekers to a 24-hour turnaround. Its online platform matches job seekers and employers, skipping the traditional (and seemingly never-ending) process of interviews, bureaucracy, and long calls. Targeting both recruiters and HR teams on one side, and job seekers on the other, its mobile app focuses primarily on service jobs like receptionist, baker, barista, call centre worker, delivery person, as well as white collar office positions and walking guides. It’s already got major clients like GAP, Startbucks, TGI Fridays and Vodaphone, and in 2019 raised a seed round of €530K.
ORamaVR – ORamaVR, founded in 2016, is a deeptech startup bringing the operating room to virtual reality. Using cutting edge virtual reality tech, it has developed an unmatched, proprietary, psychomotor, gamified multi-user software platform that shows students the ‘reality’ of conducting a surgery. Individuals users can train at home, and at Universities up to 7 people can get a remote connection. Trainings include specific surgeries such as knee and hip arthroplasty, emergency trauma scenarios and dental implants. The startup has won numerous recognitions, such as the Auggie Award (AR & VR awards) for the Biggest Societal Impact 2019.
Loceye – Loceye, founded in 2018, is a biometric eye-tracking platform for marketing. Its eye-tracking and gazing analysis works with the minimum requirements of an integrated webcam or a basic stock web camera, meaning that no special tech is required on the side of the website visitor. The technology is perfect for teams that are designing new sites or optimising assets like website content, images, emails, ad creatives and videos, as you can gather real world feedback before launch.
Workathlon – Workathlon, founded in 2017, is an exclusive job and recruitment portal for the hospitality industry. Its portal has helped over 30,000 hospitality professionals to date, showing hundreds of hotel and hospitality jobs for job seekers, and helping companies find the right talent. Its AI-powered matching system has conquered Greece and is now serving companies and individuals in Cyprus, Germany, Malta, UAE and Switzerland, too. The Athens-based team has closed two rounds of funding, with the last being this year in 2020, reaching an amount of over €110K.
Causaly – Causaly, founded in 2017, is building the world’s biggest evidence data platform, for biomed professionals. Its AI-supported literature reviews helps biomed professionals find, visualise and interpret biomedical knowledge, and overall speed up the process of finding solutions to our greatest biomedical challenges. Its fast machine-reading technology can in seconds visualise relevant cause- and effect relationships from all published biomedical evidence to date. Its tech is already being used across a number of sectors, and can help in drug discovery, safety, clinical Trials, epidemiology and clinical care. With offices spread between Athens and London, the startup is already making waves in the biomed sector.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!
Plum isn’t based in Greece, it just has offices there