About Metis Ventures:

• Metis Ventures is a data-driven early-stage investment platform focusing on Central Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and Turkey. The team behind Metis Ventures has been investing in tech companies for over a decade and deployed $2 billion in public and private markets in total.
• Since 2020, the team has been investing together through three early-stage funds: TechOne Ventures, LogoVentures, and TwoZero Ventures. These funds are backed by private investors. In 2024, the team gathered its efforts under Metis Ventures.
• Their portfolio contains more than 55 companies across 27 countries, co-investing with over 100 global investors. They invested in Miros AI, Quin AI, Brand Defense, Kamion, Getmobil, and Cognitive, among others. Within 4 years, the portfolio has realized 4 exits, including BluTV’s acquisition by Warner Bros and Tridi’s acquisition by Xeometry.

Plans of Metis Ventures for the CEE:

Metis Ventures aims to focuses on 5 key AI-enabled areas:

• AI apps driving productivity;
• cybersecurity;
• fintech;
• climatetech;
• digital health.

To lead their CEE entering, Metis Ventures has recruited Mircea Ghita, SeedBlink’s ex-Country Manager in Romania. Ghita has been working in the startup investing field since 2018, and worked at Amsterdam-based VC henQ.

I joined Metis Ventures because I believe that together with this team we can achieve great things. I was drawn to the challenge of expanding and leading our presence in CEE and supporting the best tech entrepreneurs firsthand. My role will be to find top founders to partner with and support while establishing Metis Ventures as the top choice for early-stage rounds in CEE. We invest in entrepreneurs who are fun to work with, are on their way to dominating or creating their markets and who we can genuinely help, — says Mircea Ghita, the newly appointed Principal for CEE at Metis Ventures.

In addition, the fund will target seed and late-seed (early Series A) stages, with initial investments ranging from €500,000 to €3 million. Half of their funds are reserved for follow-on rounds to ensure continued support for portfolio companies.In CEE, the firm is looking to make 8-10 investments in 1 year.

About Smartbill

• SmartBill was co-founded in 2006 by Ioana and Radu Hasan and Mircea Căpățînă. The company launched its solution in 2011 and released its first cloud invoicing product in 2014. In February 2016, SmartBill raised a €1.1 million funding round led by Catalyst Romania and together with Gecad Ventures. According to the company’s data, SmartBill has experienced nearly 20-fold growth since Catalyst’s initial investment, with annual revenue increases ranging from 30% to 60%.
• Since March 2024, more than 6.5 million documents have been issued via the platform every month. For 2024, the company estimates a 60% increase in turnover and expects to exceed the threshold of 150,000 customers.

The deal details

• Catalyst Romania is a fund manager that launched the first private equity and venture capital fund dedicated to Romania in 2012, funded through JEREMIE. The fund focuses on Technology & Internet, Media & Communications, and Technology Services investments.
• In recent years, it has invested more than €12 million in 10 Romanian technology companies, such as Vola.ro, AvocatNet.ro, 123FormBuilder, Simartis, SmartDreamers, OmniConvert, SeedBlink, evoMAG, and ESX.

The journey of growth with Catalyst as an investor and partner has been remarkable, witnessing a tenfold expansion over the span of eight years. Marius’s invaluable advice played a pivotal role during crucial junctures in the business, contributing significantly to our success. It’s partnerships like these that shape the trajectory of a company, and we’re grateful for the support and guidance provided by Catalyst and Marius throughout this journey,

Radu Hasan, CEO and co-founder of Smartbill, said.

In 2020, Visma acquired more than 50% of Smartbill to accelerate its growth rate and the development of the SmartBill ecosystem. Now, Catalyst Romania has sold the remaining shares for an undisclosed amount of the deal.

• Early Game Ventures (EGV) was founded in 2018 by Cristian Munteanu, and its primary focus is on startups in emerging markets in Europe. According to EGV, its first fund invested in 28 Romanian technology companies in various fields such as AI, cyber security, enterprise software, edtech, or consumer apps. EGV Fund I has announced 4 exits, with an internal rate of return of 45%.

About Early Game Ventures Fund II:

• The new fund will invest in 25-30 early-stage technology startups, continuing the thesis of the first Early Game fund. It will focus on areas such as cyber security, enterprise software, and AI applications. 60-70% of the investments will be in Romanian startups, with the rest in Europe or further. Their ticket is up to €6 million. 
• The fund benefits from an investment of €30 million from the Recovery Equity Fund, managed by the European Investment Fund and financed by the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience within the Next Generation EU. The other 50% of the fund was provided by private investors. 

“We are looking for founders who live in the future, and we focus our efforts on giving them fuel to achieve their goals. Fuel means not only money but also networking, support, guidance to avoid mistakes, asking the right questions, finding clients, and raising the next round of investments,

shared with the Recursive, Dan Călugăreanu, EGV Partner.

Dan Calugareanu continues his activity as a Partner in both funds managed by Early Game. Florin Visa joined Early Game at the start of negotiations for this second fund.

• GapMinder VC is a Romanian venture capital firm focused on seed and Series A investments into local and regional startups that have the potential for global expansion in IT software and service-related sectors.
• The investment strategy of the fund is to support deeptech startups at seed and late seed stages, making first investments of up to €2.5 million, with significant follow-on capabilities. The fund became active on February 14th after its first closing and will shortly announce its first transaction.
• It was raised with the support of the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). The capital injection consists of two parts:
  • EIF supported GapMinder Fund II with an aggregate of €30 million via two initiatives, namely the European Union program InvestEU and the Recovery Equity Fund, part of The National Recovery and Resilience Plan co-financed by EU via Next GenerationEU. 
  • EBRD invested €10 million in this fund. This is the first investment of EBRD in a fund launched by a team of Romanian partners.
• According to the fund, it aims to support startups from Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bulgaria, operating in the fintech, cybersecurity, enterprise automation, and data/analytics verticals.

The winners of the InnoStars Awards final pitch competition are:

• €25,000 — Orgavalue, a Portugal-based biotechnology startup developing new human organs using bioengineering technology.
• €15,000 — BEAT Therapeutics: a Portugal-based pharmaceutical startup leveraging DNA Damage Response (DDR) to deliver targeted and resistance-defying therapeutics against hard-to-treat cancers.
• €10,000 — D-Sight, a Spain-based startup developing an eye drop formulation for the prevention and treatment of diabetic retinopathy in its early stages.

The startups voted to receive the InnoStars Community Award:

• €25,000 — Mebster, a Czech Republic-based support medical care provider developing a passive exoskeleton that enables people with partial or complete loss of function of the lower limbs to walk again.
• €15,000 — Frontier Management Consulting, a Romania-based company who presented an innovative bioinformatics platform meticulously developed for the early diagnosis of bronchopulmonary and colorectal cancer.
• €10,000 — Luca Health, a UK-based startup specialized in mental health screening and symptom identification in elite sports.

The winner of the public voting to receive the InnoStars Community Award:

• WakeZ, a Romania-based startup developing a digital pill and digital biomarker for disruptive treatment of depression.

Apart from the winners, the Ukrainian startup Pleso Therapy, developing a platform for online psychotherapy, also took part in the final competition of the EIT Health InnoStars 2023 event.

• The majority of the fund was raised with private money amid investment slowdown.
• The fund wants to invest in over 20 early-stage startups founded by Eastern European founders who have global ambitions, with an average investment ticket of $500,000.
• It has already finalized 7 investments in Romania, Croatia, Serbia, and the broader Eastern European diaspora: Nestor, Goodlegal, Videowise, Veridion, Turneo, Sera, and an undisclosed deal.

In 2022, AIN.Capital wrote about the launch of the Underline Ventures first fund. Back in July that year, the fund managed to get half of its targeted $20 million. You can read more about the launch, here.

• Startups can apply through the form on INNO’s website. The application deadline is April 2, 2023.
• Founded in 2019, INNO contributes to the regional development of the North-West region of Romania by offering a variety of tools meant to encourage research and tech transfer such as a Regional Innovation and Entrepreneurship Portfolio, Open Innovation Challenges, and a lengthy database of resources in the Knowledge Hub section.
• The accelerator will take place in Cluj-Napoca and targets on startups in the fields of life sciences and health. The program will consist of over ten meetings spread over a period of six months, with the possibility of attending online. Early-stage startups that are registered with the Trade Registry and teams with just a prototype may apply to the acceleration program.
• During the program, startups will work with the accelerator’s specialists to develop their personal plans. Based on this plan, startups will conduct specific activities using the resources provided in the accelerator to validate the business hypotheses underlying their solutions and get closer to their objectives.
• The bi-monthly meetings will provide an opportunity for entrepreneurs to share the results of their activities, as well as the lessons they have learned from regional and international experts who will provide critical feedback. Each startup will receive support in the amount of €8,000, provided by INNO and EIT Health.
• Among the program’s partners are the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca, the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, the Technical University Cluj-Napoca, FreshBlood, Fortech, Nagarro, Linnify, Activize, ROTSA, ClujIT Cluster, Startup Reaktor, Make IT in Oradea, AI Minded, Telios Care, and many others.

How to Web prepared a report on Romanian venture capital funding made in 2022. AIN.Capital shares key points.

Total volume of deals in 2022

The total volume of deals in 2022 rose near the level of the previous year’s volume – €101.7 million, compared to €116.9 million in 2021.

• If discounting for the FintechOS €51M series B outlier, the overall 2021 annual volume averages to €91.4 million and 71 transactions respectively. Therefore, 2022 outperformed 2021 by 54.3%.

In terms of the total number of transactions, there’s also a slight increase on average by 3.5% from the 71 transactions recorded in 2021 to the 73 transactions in 2022.

• Since 2017, there has been an impressive 12.3 times increase in the total transactions volume. Thus, the yearly volume of venture deals involving Romanian startups went from €8.2 million in 2017 to a promising €101.7 million in 2022.

Pre-seed, seed, and series A average

In terms of the investment type breakdown and comparison with the previous year, the results are divisive:

• The volume of Series A transactions almost tripled compared with the previous year.
  • The volume went from €15.3 million in 2021 to €42.6 million in 2022. This covers an overall number of 6 deals, compared to 3 in the previous year. The average deal size increased by 39%, from €5,103.3k in 2021 to €7,095k in 2022.
• The total volume of seed transactionsincreased by 29%.
  • The amount reached €56.4 million compared to €43.4 million in 2021. There was a total of 48 transactions. The average deal size also increased from €1,007.9k in 2021 to €1,175.5k in 2022.
• On the other hand, the pre-seed volume went down by 15.9%.
  • The startups managed to secure a total of €2.7 million compared to the previous year’s €3.3 million. The number of deals also decreased to 19 transactions compared to 20 in 2021. The average size for pre-seed transactions decreased by 11.5% to €144.3k.

Top deals of 2022

Among the top deals of 2022 are Druid, Digitail, Bware Labs, Sessions, Bunnyshell, Machinations, NeuroLabs, Cyscale, AdServio, and Ogre AI, making up €51.6 million by raising series A and seed rounds. In total, these startups added up more than half (50.8%) of the total transaction volume of 2022.

About How to Web

How to Web is Eastern Europe’s leading startup and innovation conference. It helps thousands of founders and operators to create better startups, products, teams, with the support of some of the leading tech companies, experts, and investors.

• According to the company, employees can choose hybrid or full-time work in the new offices.

“Our luxofters from Iași and Cluj can now enjoy the benefits of a truly flexible workplace that perfectly suits the unique needs of their teams – new offices are available in these two locations. Hybrid or remote – however you work best works for Luxoft,”

the company states.

• Luxoft Romania has been established since 2001. The company currently has approximately 2300 employees working from different locations in the country.
• Luxoft has two offices in Bucharest and almost 200 job openings in Romania, most of them are remote. The new locations in Iași and Cluj-Napoca will enable the company to continue to grow its team in the region, which is now one of the most attractive talent pool in CEE.
• Earlier Luxoft also announced its new office in Turkey.
• Luxoft is a digital strategy and software engineering firm providing technology solutions for businesses. Acquired by U.S. company DXC Technology in 2019, Luxoft is a global operation in 44 cities and 21 countries with a workforce of nearly 18,000 people.

In the Startup of the Day column, founder and CEO of Goodlegal Vasile Tiple shares the details about the startup’s idea, its product, and future plans.

“The Startup of the Day column on AIN.Capital is dedicated to tech projects from all sectors that originated from the CEE countries. If you would like to introduce your project, please fill in the questionnaire.”

Tell us about your startup. How does it work?

Goodlegal is a legal infrastructure platform designed to offer an out-of-the-box legal operations framework for companies. This means that any company can just create an account and have access to everything the platform offers:

• document management system to store all your legal documents (no more drive or sharepoint or lost docs on email),
• document lifecycle & e-sign (no more offline work in word or PDF, which then you need to upload to other tools to make it actionable),
• collaboration with internal and external stakeholders & workflows (keep the entire work in the same platform both for legal and non-legal users, for example, HR contracts can be managed by HR teams in the platform),
• including industry standard legal content and a specialized and trusted law firms partner network (no more working with lawyers that are not specialized in the issue a company needs support with).

The entire ecosystem, which we are building, we call Legal Infrastructure, as a user can hit the ground running with our platform day one, or we can adjust it to the specifics of that user. For example, larger companies might need certain integrations. For startups, we already have prepared a prepackaged set of documents needed to facilitate legal compliance day one, which they can freely use.

How did you come up with the startup’s idea? What was the reason/motivation behind it?

The idea of making legal easy and accessible to help companies focus on their business by becoming self-sufficient. In my previous role as UiPath as GC, I wanted to digitalize the legal work as much as possible from day one, but there wasn’t a tool to help with that. So I did what everyone is doing even today — improvised by using various tools to achieve legal objectives. After I left UiPath and started to advise various startups, I noticed the same issues I had at UiPath in 2016, for each company I needed to put in place its legal infrastructure from scratch (tools, content, etc.), reinventing the wheel each time.

This is how Goodlegal idea crystallized — to create a platform which allows you to do this at scale, thus empowering the companies to become self-sufficient.

How long did it take to reach the prototype or MVP? What did you encounter?

It took us around 9 months to do the MVP, validate it with select companies, and move to development of the production ready versions.

When exactly did you launch your product? Or when the launch is planned?

We launched it on November 23, 2022.

We invite all everyone to join Goodlegal as we are also creating an open source legal — meaning that the legal content available in the platform can be shared by users for the benefit of everyone else on the platform.

Tell us about the startup’s business model. How do you monetize your product?

We are offering a Community free version for startups and individuals who want to digitalize their work. This is extremely important as startups may or may not have funding. So having this tool for solving legal issues can help them to avoid sabotaging their future and growth by not considering the legal issues, which might occur in their activity. This will also help them to avoid a lot of issues scale-ups are facing due to not having a similar resource in place when they were startups.

The subscription version will be available for companies with large volumes of documents and legal operations needs since Q1 of 2023. Until that time, the platform will provide free services to anyone.

What are your target markets and consumers?

Our initial target are startups, because we really want to help them avoid sabotaging their growth due to legal issues. At such an early stage, we believe that startups should focus on their product and business, while legal matters are easily solved with Goodlegal.

On top of this, we are also targeting scale-ups and enterprises as they are faced with similar to startups legal issues but at a bigger scale. The legal market evolved around niche tech solutions and there are so many technologies, which only solve one specific issue, which is a nightmare for any CIO or a general counsel or a legal team.

How to consolidate the entire legal tech stack available to make sense of it internally? This is the question to which Goodlegal offers an answer. Hopefully:)

If the startup has already launched the product, what are the results: metrics, income, or any clear indicators that can be evaluated.

The number of active users, document library access, number of law firms with which we partner to address local geo specific legal issues. We already have partners in the US, Romania, Switzerland. It would be great to also find a law firm partner in Ukraine.

What about your team? How many people are working in the startup? If you’re looking for new employees, indicate whom exactly.

We are now a team of 10 and constantly looking for great developers, marketeers, and sales persons, and other vital functions, which we are just now building.

We hire in Romania, but also in the region — in particular, in Ukraine, where there are a lot of great talents, which I remember from my days as director of UiPath Ukraine after the acquisition of the Ukrainian startup StepShot by UiPath.

Have you already raised any investments? Provide us with more details on each funding round: the amount, investors, the purpose of the investment.

We raised a pre-seed of €1.2M from EarlyBird who was leading the round, Credo Ventures, Underline Ventures, and UiPath CEO Daniel Dines. The purpose was to build the team and the product fast so that we can scale globally as our platform solves an issue which exceeds borders.

What’s next? Tell us about your future plans.

We want to be the “legal operating system” for the industry and help to digitalize the work of law firms, startups, scale-ups, and enterprises. Our work is directed toward the creation of an ecosystem for anything related to document processing, removal of paperwork, and reduction of unneeded bureaucracy. We want to make legal easy and accessible to anyone.

• The delivery hub in Romania was built upon the Czech software developer CN Group Ciklum acquired last year. The company has long been present in Central Europe, including Romania.
• The new office has started operating under the Ciklum brand.
• Ciklum Romania is to benefit from the synergy of CN Group’s achievements and local expertise with Ciklum’s global aspirations and experience.
• The Ciklum team in Romania already unites several dozen professionals working on end-to-end development of innovative solutions for well-known brands in various industries. This year, the company plans to multiply the number of specialists in the Romanian center.

“After the acquisition of the Czech CN Group, which also cooperates with Romanian developers, establishing a new delivery hub under the Ciklum brand was only a matter of time for us. We know about the strong talent pool in Eastern and Central Europe – thousands of our colleagues work from Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Now we can confidently add Romania to this list. We are sure that Ciklum’s experience in the global IT industry will open up many opportunities for local talent to grow professionally and refresh the local IT community,”

said Andriy Oksenyuk, CFO, Ciklum.

• A few months ago, Ciklum also opened a delivery hub in Sofia, Bulgaria, which already brings together more than 100 professionals.
• Ciklum is a global product engineering and digital services company headquartered in the UK. It has 4,000+ software developers, designers, product managers, and data scientists around the world.

• Underline Ventures has been backed by over 20 founders and early-stage operators from companies such as UiPath, Green Horse Games, Telerik, Elrond, MorphL, Smartbill, and CleverTaxi. A host of professional venture fund investors also participated in the funding.
• Having worked with Gecad Ventures, 3TS Capital Partners, and MVP Academy, Bogdan Iordache has over 15 years of experience in the investment world and is heading Underline Ventures.

“We strongly believe founders should own their decision-making and the overall direction of their company — this will help them become better leaders and develop teams with a strong culture. And, if things don’t go as planned, which they often do, we help them through thick and thin,”

Underline Ventures states.

• The fund will invest in Eastern European startups at pre-seed, seed, and late seed stages along with other investors. Its average ticket size is €500,000.
• Underline Ventures also promises to help founders in their companys’ journey from seed to serial stages of funding, assisting them in raising further investments and looking for talent.

• The company has been working on the launch for the past six months.
• The main reason for opening the office is the support of clients from Romania and development in the local market. Also, according to Semenyshyn, Romania rates among the top 20 countries with the best software engineers globally. So the company will have access to quality human resources.
• Currently, SoftServe has more than 80 job openings for the new office.

Liki24.com has had international ambitions since its very foundation. According to the founder and CEO, Anton Avrinskyi, the team has initially set a goal to build a global business operating in many markets and allowing millions of people to purchase medicines cheaper.

The first country was Poland in July 2020

The team also thought about the United Kingdom, but finally, they decided on the Polish market based on the following:

• far less cost of launch;
• it’s a neighbor of Ukraine;
• Poland is the fastest-growing nation in Europe.

In the Forbes interview in July 2021, Avrinskyi said that the Polish market is different from the Ukrainian; it’s less consolidated, more regulated, and conservative. However, there are also positive changes. In 2020, Poland implemented a united electronic prescription system simplifying drug delivery and logistics.

At the moment, Liki24 has its delivery service in Warsaw. Postal delivery is also available countrywide. Recently, the Polish logistics company InPost has installed 70 parcel lockers with fridges in Warsaw, Krakow, Wroclaw, and Lodz. As a result, users can quickly and safely get their medicines that require a particular temperature during transport and storage.

The next goal was Romania

New markets to expand were selected in three steps; the market analysis has been performed together with one of Liki24.com investors — Genesis Investments. After all, they chose a country with a relatively small drug market characterized by low competition, so in July 2021, the company arose in Bucharest.

Nowadays, Liki24.com has its own courier services in Bucharest and Constanța, providing delivery to all cities. The company is working on extending the local geography of the service availability to launch the 30-minutes express delivery, which is very popular in Ukraine.

Liki24.com is promoted in Romania via contextual ads on Google, Facebook, Instagram, and through influencers. However, word-of-mouth marketing is still the best.

The service is user-friendly and helps people solve a row of problems: granting access to high-quality goods, saving time and money, becoming popular from user to user, and the last is the best promotion. Several local media paid attention to Liki24.com in their releases.

According to the company representatives, after six months of its operation in the market, its turnover increased more than ten times in Romania.

In the past year, Liki24 also launched the courier service in Budapest, the capital of Hungary

The company reps said that currently, the team works on legal issues without disclosing any figures.

Drug delivery is one of the most regulated and legislation-sensible industries in Europe. For example, a law effective January 1, 2021, significantly changed the meds delivery format in Hungary. That’s why our legal team now works there hard to find an optimal solution within the current legislation.

In 2021, Liki24.com had over 300,000 users in Poland, Hungary, and Romania

The numbers speak for the demand. Another good news for us is that the repeat purchase rate hit 70%: users test our service, like it, and purchase meds and healthy goods again at our platform, the company reps said.

The main trend Liki24 can confirm for all three countries is increasing online purchases of drugs and wellness goods, home delivery, and online booking.

Currently, the company is focused on scaling and developing the platform in operating markets. Further foreign expansion is not ended, but still, there are many things to be researched in different countries, not only within Europe.

List

The top 10 best countries that combine convenient working conditions and travel opportunities are:

1. Portugal
2. Spain
3. Romania
4. Mauritius
5. Japan
6. Malta
7. Costa Rica
8. Panama
9. Czech Republic
10. Germany

As noted in the momondo report, Portugal was named the best for its relatively low cost of living, good weather, plenty of vacation spots, and low crime rate. Moreover, the country offers visas for digital nomads, and the locals have high English language proficiency. Portugal was rated 100/100 by momondo and recognized as the best country for remote work globally.

Spain comes in second place with a score of 93/100. This country has high Internet speeds, a large number of co-working spaces, and visas for freelancers. At the same time, Romania, the country that closed the top 3 countries for remote work, is known for its attractive prices for long-term rental and cheap food.

Ukraine took 55th place, leaving behind Montenegro, New Zealand, the US, South Africa, etc. Momondo gave the country 54 points out of 100 for the lowest prices on hotels and apartments for short-term rent and travel costs. Ukraine received a low score because of unstable weather conditions.

Methodology

Momondo has analyzed 111 countries based on 22 factors from six different categories to compile the rankings: Travel, Prices, Health & Safety, Remote Work, Entertainment, and Weather.

The Remote Work category includes four factors:

• Internet speed (downloading) — average speed in Mbps.
• Internet speed (uploading) — average speed in Mbps.
• Digital Nomad Visas — the information about Digital Nomad Visas is based on data obtained from the official websites of the authorities of each country in the ranking.
• Seats in co-working spaces — the approximate number of seats in co-working spaces in the country.

Dnipro office

During the last ten years, Playtika, a social casino company, was sold twice — for $140 million and $4.4 billion. It even went public in January 2021 and raised an additional $1.88 billion. Playtika was founded by Israelis Gigi Levy-Weiss and Uri Shahak, but from almost the very beginning, it was built in Ukraine.

Playtika’s first R&D center in Ukraine was opened in Vinnytsia, the second — in Kyiv. The third office was launched in Dnipro in 2012 as a result of a successful acqui-hiring of the Dnipro-based studio Alawar Southpoint.

The Dnipro R&D center, like the rest of the Ukrainian ones, is now headed by Israeli Ofer Dar, who previously managed the Kyiv studio House of Fun, which Playtika acquired in 2014.

Layoffs

As AIN.UA learned from its own sources, Playtika’s office in Dnipro will see some changes: some employees were offered a move to Bucharest, while the rest will leave the company in the first quarter of 2022. Specifically, we are talking about the team that worked on graphics and slot machines at Caesar casino. However, no one is talking about complete closure — there are still three job openings in the Dnipro office as of October 29. The remaining team will work on new projects. Perhaps it will work on developments for the companies that Playtika acquired in recent years — the German company Wooga and Finnish Reworks.

AIN.UA asked the company about the reasons for layoffs and relocation of the Dnipro office and how it would affect other Ukrainian offices. But at the time of publication, we did not receive any comments.

Risk factor

Notably, in its Q1 2021 report, Playtika, as an IPO company, named its R&D offices as risk factors — so-called country risks. Among the named offices were Ukraine, Romania, and Belarus. It is not clear whether these risks are equal. Meanwhile, as of 2021, Playtika employs 1,000 people in Ukraine, 600 in Belarus, and 500 in Romania. And together with people from Dnipro, this number will soon grow.

Ultrashop is a chain of brand boutiques that together with mono-brand boutiques of Levi’s, Guess, Baldinini, Karl Lagerfeld, Boss, and Hugo constitute Ultra Group based in Odesa. On the 21st of May 2019, one of the group’s legal entities, EOST Inc., concluded an agreement with the Romania-based company Starsoft Europe to create a web store branded as Ultrashop. The court documents do not mention the name of the Israeli citizen residing in Germany who was concluding the agreement from Starsoft’s side.

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities of Ukraine, Odesa-based Starsoft, LLC belongs to Martin Shein. Additionally, according to the register of pre-court decisions, he is a suspect in the other case, and he should be held in custody during the court process:

According to the files of the case, the implementation of the online store was split into stages, and deliverables should have been presented to the client. Moreover, the company was supposed to deliver the finished online store by November 20, 2019. The representative of Starsoft received payment from EOST Inc. for the development of the store from May to August 2019, with a total amount of ₴1,745,939 (confirmed by the representative’s receipts).

According to the investigation materials, the second party had no intent to fulfill its part of the agreed obligations and was imitating the online store’s coding work. In May 2019, Starsoft’s CEO gave his order to the UI/UX designer, SEO specialists, and a project manager to develop a website concept, its ad policies, and a project task list. Nonetheless, two technical leads were not receiving any orders to write program code for the store during the period from May to August 2019.

Meanwhile, Starsoft’s representatives were showing the client some pieces of work done from the online store, including the interface’s graphic elements, ad policies, project tasks, claiming that the work on the store was going and it would be delivered in time. EOST Inc. was transferring money as follows: ₴436,323 in May 2019, ₴435,315 in June 2019, and ₴426,649 and ₴420,352 in August.

Meanwhile, Starsoft’s management had left Ukraine and was not communicating since then. The developers who were supposed to work on the project were not receiving salaries, and all had quit by October 2019. Starsoft’s management was not paying the rent since September 2019. In September 2019, the representatives of EOST Inc. had checked the progress of work, and there was less than 5% of completion. Whereas according to the agreement, there should have been 75% of the project done. As of November 30, 2019, the end date stated in the Agreement, the online store was still not delivered to the client.

The total amount of material losses of EOST company was ₴1,745,939.

In August 2020, investigators from the Investigations Unit of the Primorsky Police Department drew up a report regarding suspected fraud by the management of Starsoft. Several members of the company were put on the international wanted list, and as of March 2021, it was established that (presumably) Martin Shein was in Bogota, Colombia. He was detained for extradition to Ukraine.

The case is being investigated: the last court hearing took place on August 27, 2021. No verdict has been issued yet.

According to the CEO of Liki24.com, the choice of new markets for scaling was made in three stages, and one of the investors of the startup, Genesis Investments, was also involved in the analysis process.

As a result, the company chose Romania, a country with a small pharmaceutical market and low competition. If everything works out, the company plans to launch the service in two or three countries, one of which may be outside of Europe, Avrinsky said.

About Liki24

Liki24 was launched in Ukraine in 2017. According to Forbes, over 600,000 Ukrainians have already used its medication delivery services. During its existence, the startup managed to raise $6 million in investments, including funding from Genesis Investments, TA Ventures, and Horizon Capital. The company’s turnover grew to $20 million in 2020.

In July 2020, on its 3rd birthday, Liki24 was launched in Poland. The service is now available in Warsaw, Krakow, and Gdansk.

In May, the startup, in cooperation with Terralab, launched Lab24, a test-taking service. It offers any tests, including PCR and COVID-19 antibody tests, at home or an office.

This time we prepared a short article about GapMinder VC fund. 

GapMinder is a Venture Capital Fund, targeting IT Software and Services startups in Romania and Central Eastern Europe.

When the fund was launched?

2017

What is your investment focus?

Deep-tech products with bold startup teams. AI/ML, FinTech, eHealth, Security, B2B SaaS

What is the average investment amount?

€500K

How many deals does the fund make per year?

From 10 to 20

Does the fund invest only in Romanian startups or in foreign projects too?

Romania and surrounding countries

What does the fund offer except the investment?

Acceleration program through Techcelerator, Scaling advice, Networking, B2B Sales