• Daytona was founded in 2023 by ex-Chief Developer at Infobip Ivan Burazin, together with Goran Draganic, and Vedran Jukic, and develops an open source development environment manager. It aims to simplify the process of creating standard and secure environments, automates environment setups on branches, and shares environments seamlessly.
• According to the startup, since launching its enterprise developer solution in late 2023, Daytona has nearly doubled its Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). Recently, the company released an open-source version forced on individual developers.

The funding round details:

This investment was led by Upfront Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that has been investing in the US and Europe since 1996, and is one of the largest and longest-standing firms in Southern California.

The round also included participation from the existing investor 500 Global which has doubled down on its investment in Daytona. With $2.7 billion in assets under management, 500 Global has funded over 35 billion-dollar companies, including GitLab, Twilio, Algolia, and many others.

Daytona’s vision of simplifying and democratizing development environments aligns perfectly with our investment philosophy. The most forward-thinking companies in the world have landed on cloud developer environments to achieve a uniform developer environment for their teams. The Daytona founders have been working towards this since their prior startup Codeanywhere. Their subject matter expertise and passion uniquely position them to build a beloved developer experience that also satisfies even the strongest security requirements,

Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures.

Additionally, the startup announced that Kevin Zhang, Partner at Upfront Ventures, joined its board. The startup also added that the new funding will be used to accelerate the expansion of its solution, and to hire new marketing, sales and engineering roles.

• Native Teams was founded in 2020 by Jack Thorogood and Alex Mitrevska. The startup specializes in providing work payment solutions, aiming to help individuals and businesses streamline global remuneration within a centralized platform. Native Teams has expanded to over 65 countries with a global team of more than 200 employees across their target markets.

Investment details

The round saw participation from several CEE-based funds:

• The Sofia-based venture capital fund Eleven Ventures, which supports tech companies from Southeast Europe;
• Fil Rouge Capital, a Croatian investment fund manager whose funds focus on early stage businesses from pre-seed, seed, and Series A rounds of investment;
• MFG Invest, a group of angel, Begin Capital, a UK-based VC fund, and others also participated.

The market opportunity ahead of us is probably the biggest sector imaginable: redefining payments for work. This funding round lets our capital-efficient business take the next important steps as we serve ever-broader market segments, to a greater extent, and in a growing number of countries,

Jack Thorogood, CEO and co-founder of Native Teams, said.

Fresh investment will be used to enhance their financial services platform for better product performance in their key markets. Moreover, it will help the enhancement and expansion of their offering into the US, India, and wider Asian region. 

About Pythagora

• Pythagora was founded in 2023 by Leon Ostrez, Senko Rasic, and Zvonimir Sabljic. The company is an AI developer tool that builds apps through natural language interaction. Using Large Language Models (LLMs) and advanced machine learning algorithms, it aims to ensure optimal efficiency and quality by enabling smooth communication between users and the AI tool. One of the main goals is automating developer workflows by streamlining tasks. 
• The app is based on Pythagora’s solution, GPT Pilot, an open-source tool, which facilitates app creation through conversation and interaction with the AI developer. According to the startup, it boasts a user base of 30,000 developers. 

Investment details

• The investors this round include the American accelerator Y Combinator, which also supported the team of Ukrainian AiSDR recently.

• Other investors included Polish venture capital fund Inovo VC, 500 Emerging Europe, Moonfire, Rebel, and Uphonest Capital.

Pythagora’s impressive open source traction, high rate of recurrent users, and the full fledged applications developed with it demonstrate the unique expertise of the founding team to tackle this massive opportunity – making it a no brainer decision for us to invest,

Enis Hulli, General Partner at 500 Emerging Europe, said.

The funding will be used to scale the company’s research and development, while also fueling growth and user adoption over the next few years.

About GlycanAge

• GlycanAge was founded in 2020 with the aim to commercialize the 20-year glycobiology experience of its co-founder Nikolina Lauc. The startup offers a cutting-edge biological age test that utilizes glycan biomarkers to enable early health risks prevention strategies for both consumers and healthcare professionals.
• The startup is based on the Human Glycome research project, which studies the critical role of glycans in the body’s biological functions, which may undergo changes in over 70 diseases. In some cases, studying these biomarkers can reveal vulnerability to certain diseases a decade prior to symptoms and diagnosis. 

We are thrilled to have the support of LAUNCHub Ventures and Kadmos Capital, who share our vision for a healthier future. This funding round marks a significant milestone for GlycanAge, and we are excited to continue our journey towards transforming healthcare and empowering individuals to take control of their well-being,

Nikolina Lauc, CEO of GlycanAge, commented.

Who are the investors?

The €3.9 million funding round was co-led by LAUNCHub Ventures and Kadmos Capital. This endeavor was aided by significant grant support, including a $140,000 grant from Mubadala’s accelerator program HUB71, and an additional $220,000 from an EU AI grant.

• LAUNCHub Ventures is a Sofia-based early-stage VC fund, supporting technology startups in the Seed and Series A funding stages across SEE and CEE. Its initial investments are between €300,000 and €2 million, leading investment rounds up to €4 million. Also, the fund oftentimes continue supporting the funding needs of its portfolio companies in future rounds.

• Kadmos Capital is a London-based Venture Capital Firm, focused on early stage investments in deep tech and impactful technologies.

Further plans

The fresh capital injection will help GlycanAge fuel the strategic shift from the longevity space to the broader diagnostics market. The funding will enable the company to establish a clear regulatory strategy and product pipeline.

• Prolaz is a Dalmatia-based company set to redefine the PoS transaction acquiring with its unique B2B solution. The company supports banks and merchants by enabling faster time to market for new checkout products while reducing non-cash payment costs. 
• The company is among the first independent providers of an innovative multi-acquiring PoS solution in Eastern Europe and is the first one that successfully enter the Bulgarian market in 2022. The FinTech company is already partners with 10 of the largest banks in SEE.

This funding represents the next step in our plans to aggressively expand into multiple new EU countries while scaling up our business infrastructure to support the additional growth. The benefits of multi-acquirer processing exist in all European countries and are only now beginning to be recognized. At the same time, new hardware is enabling additional value-added software to co-exist with multi-acquiring payment applications. We are now positioned well to capitalize on these trends,

John Jager, Executive Director of Prolaz Bulgaria, comments.

• The fresh capital is coming from the New Vision 3 Fund and a cohort of undisclosed business angels. NV3 is a VC firm investing in startups and growth-stage companies who are helpful for the Bulgarian ecosystem. The fund supports founders in creating future industry trends in FinTech, AI, Blockchain, and Shared Economy.

• This investment reflects NV3’s commitment to supporting innovative solutions that revolutionize industry standards and enhance operational efficiency.

• Launched in 2019 and led by Marko Pejković, Project 3 Mobility (P3) develops its own autonomous electric vehicle, specialized infrastructure, and mobility service.
• The company claims its solution helps to redefine urban mobility to keep streets safe, improve the communities, and be good for the planet. P3 is currently headquartered in Zagreb, but the company also has an R&D office in the United Kingdoms.

Who invested?

• The round, which brought the total amount of raised capital to €100 million, saw participation from TASARU Mobility Investments, a Saudi Arabian public investment fund. In its previous stages of development, the company managed to secure investments from Kia, one of South Korea’s automotive manufacturers.
• Other strategic investors who are supporting P3 are the Bulgarian software company SiteGround, the Croatian IT company Infinum, and Rimac Group, a provider of technology solutions in the mobility and energy sectors. Additional key investors are Neurone, an investment group focused on advanced technologies, and Elaf Auto, a company based in Qatar.

Over the past year, we navigated through a series of demanding procedures and in-depth analyses, both within the EU grant approval process led by the European Commission and in our pursuit of attracting private capital. The successful closure of this investment round marks another milestone in affirming the value of our project that will revolutionize mobility and enhance the quality of life in urban areas.

We believe our project will bring significant benefits for Zagreb and Croatia, as well as many other cities worldwide where we plan to launch our service,

Marko Pejković, CEO of Project 3 Mobility, commented the investment.

P3 will apply the fresh capital for further development of all elements of the project and the delivery of P3’s urban autonomous mobility ecosystem. It will also support further growth of the team.

• M Plus Group is organized into three business verticals. The BPO vertical consists of the umbrella company M Plus Croatia d.o.o. and its subsidiaries. The HR vertical consists of 18 companies that operate as part of the Workplace Group, while the newest e-commerce business vertical, operating under the brand name Eplus Ventures, consists of companies that operate within a common e-Commerce business model.
• The Mplus Group is owned by pension funds, institutional investors, and private investors. Since 2016, 17 acquisitions have been realized, and a diversified portfolio of financial, technology, energy, and logistics companies, e-commerce companies, and companies in the consumer goods sector. Mplus provides its services in 57 markets and consists of 14,700 employees.
• EBRD is a multilateral bank that promotes the development of the private sector and entrepreneurial initiative. The Bank is owned by 71 countries and aims to make the economies in its regions competitive, inclusive, well-governed, green, resilient, and integrated.

“We are excited to make this investment in such an innovative and regional growth company as Mplus.  In so doing, we re-confirm our commitment to innovation and development of the Croatian economy, including by supporting outward foreign direct investments! Mplus provides its services in 57 markets around the world, and is one of the leaders in the business process outsourcing segment”, 

Mark Davis, EBRD’s regional director for Central Europe, said.

• Via the agreement, the EBRD will take over a 28.3% in M Plus Croatia. Mplus Group will remain as the majority and controlling shareholder with 59.7%, while Mid Europa Partners will continue to support the business as a minority investor.

• The fresh investment will also be the largest equity investment by the EBRD in the technology services sector in the Southeast Europe region and one of the largest equity investments in Croatia in general.
• Mplus Group will continue to expand its strategic position in the international BPO industry, primarily through acquisitions. The Group will also continue to improve business processes’ efficiency together with creating additional job opportunities.

• EIF and HBOR’s combined commitments of €52 million are also expected to catalyse additional private-sector investments into equity funds.
• The key program objective is to support the emergence of fund managers, who devote a significant part of their investments to Croatian SMEs, small mid-caps, and mid-caps.
• Both sides will jointly manage and deploy the program through fund investments in target companies.
• The program is not restricted to any particular sector, although the focus will be on sustainability, green transformation, and innovation. At least 25% of the total amount drawn down for investments shall be invested in climate action and environmental sustainability startups.

About HBOR and EIF

EIF (European Investment Fund) is part of the European Investment Bank Group. Its main goal is to support microenterprises and small businesses by helping them to access finance.

HBOR (Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development) is Croatia’s state-owned development bank. Its remit is to promote the development of the Croatian economy by extending loans, insuring export transactions against political and commercial risks, issuing guarantees, investing in equity through private equity funds, and providing business advice.

• Co-founded in 2017 by Sabine Gradistanac Skrgatic and Igor Skrgatic, offers consulting services for individuals with blocked banking accounts and also acts as a credit mediator. The startup claims it already helped 260 individuals to financially recover and provided consultancy services to 10,000 Croatian citizens.
• The lead investor in this round is Feelsgood, the Croatian venture capital fund for investments with social effect. It has an investment capital portfolio of €30 million. In March 2023, it co-led €2 million round for Croatian GameBoost.

• The fresh round is part of a €1.3 million investment deal signed in December 2021, by which Feelsgood decided to contribute to solving the real problems of Croatian society. BE-ON aims to increase the social inclusion of enforcement debtors by providing financial consulting.

Silicon Gardens prepared the State of Adria Tech Report 2021-2022 that explores the venture deals from Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. AIN.Capital shares the key points. You can read the full report, here.

The Adria Tech ecosystem is a collaboration of three Central European countries Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia. Recently, these countries saw a surge of investment value and number, becoming one of the most dynamic tech communities.

• During 2021-2022, the ecosystem’s funding amount reached €3.45 billion, which is almost 12 times more than five years ago.
• The number of deals made by tech companies in each country reached 321 in total.
  • Slovenia managed to secure the majority, raising €1.25 billion across 209 deals.
  • However, Croatia has the highest value among the countries, securing €1.86 billion across 88 deals.
  • Serbia took the last place, with 24 deals accounting for €325 million.

• Venture capitals have established dominance in both the number of deals made (50.8%) and the total value invested (57%). Private equity executed only a limited number of deals (2.2%), but each was substantial in size (39.7%).
• The majority of the acquired capital is coming through later rounds (Series A, B, C) and megarounds (over €100 million raised).
• The largest amount of fresh capital was secured by such companies in 2021-2022:
  • €690 million raised by Rimac Group, a Croatian automotive company.
  • €545 million by Infobip, a Croatian telecommunications company.
  • €450 million by Aleph Holding-Httpool, a Slovenian digital advertising.
  • €164 million by Celtra, a Slovenian creative automation company.
  • €136 million by Quantive, a Croatian strategy execution platform.
• Total value of exits and secondaries rose to €1.6 billion in 2021-2022. By 2022, the total value reached €4.7 billion.
• To date, the Adria Tech ecosystem has 6 active unicorns: Rimac Group, Infobip, Outfit7, Httpool, Sportradar, and Outbrain.

• Founded in 2022 GameBoost is a marketplace that connects users looking for gaming services with users selling gaming services, among them are:
  • coaching (training players in popular online multiplayer video games);
  • sale of specialized user accounts;
  • duoplay (the user and the service provider can play together), etc.;
• Such services are most in demand for multiplayer online games (League of Legends, Fortnite, Valorant, Rocket League, etc.), in which each player has their own ELO rating. The startup claims that users have the opportunity to play with 0.01% of the best players in the world, achieve great results together with them, and improve their playing skills. 
• The fresh investment was led by Zagreb-based social impact VC fund Feelsgood. In February 2022 it led €600,000 round for VIDI-TO, Croatian edtech startup. In April 2022, GameBoost received €500,000 from Fil Rouge Capital.
• With the fresh investment, GameBoost plans to promote multiculturalism, and the inclusion of women in the IT industry, expand to more markets, and add more video games.

• Amodo develops a platform that enables insurance companies to create and brokers to place hyper-personalized usage-based insurance products on the market. Amodo’s platform helps to gain strategic insights into customers’ profiles, segment them into relevant groups, and acquire profitable ones. Over the past nine years, it launched 50 connected insurance projects with companies such as AIG, Porsche Versicherungs, Tower Insurance, P&V, and others. 
• Cambridge Mobile Telematics develops AI-based platform DriveWell that gathers sensor data from IoT devices (smartphones, proprietary Tags, connected vehicles, dashcams, and third-party devices), fuses them with contextual data to create a unified view of the vehicle and driver behavior. It powers risk assessment, safety, claims, and driver improvement programs. CMT is headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices in Budapest, Chennai, Seattle, Tokyo, and Zagreb.

“We’re strengthening our European efforts by adding Amodo’s expansive market knowledge and deep relationships, and doubling our team in Europe to over 100 people to enable more European organizations to realize the incredible benefits of telematics — all while saving lives on the road,”

said William Powers, CMT’s CEO 

• With the acquisition, CMT will accelerate its global expansion, and Amodo’s customers will have access to telematics solutions for driver risk measurement, proactive crash, and claims services, and behavioral modification to reduce driving risk. Amodo will adopt the CMT name. Marijan Mumdziev, Amodo’s CEO, will become CMT’s Managing Director of Europe. 

• VIDI-TO produces the VIDI X tool for learning STEM skills, which is already available in 600 schools across the Republic of Croatia, and to which more than 24,000 students have access. VIDI Project X is a developing microcomputer, powered by an ESP32 processor, that contains two cores and a TFT touchscreen. VIDI X is equipped with a few interesting sensors and a special port that allows additional expansion of functionality.
• The goal of the project is to allow students access to the technology that supports their learning process and sparks their curiosity to look for new discoveries in order to make them more educated and rounded people that will contribute to society as a whole to become more educated, tolerant, and socially equal. VIDI-TO says that public schools from the USA, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Argentina, and Germany are interested in this tool and its newly adapted versions.
• The fresh investment was led by Zabreb-based social impact VC fund Feelsgood. In September 2022 it led the €750,000 round for Croatian-Slovenian startup Juicefast which develops technologically advanced production of natural detox juices and healthy meals.

“With this investment, our employees, our external collaborators and our development teams will all receive in a strong platform on which we can together make original strides in the development of new high-tech services through VIDI, as well as products that we can be very proud of,”

says Tomislav Kotnik, the founder and CEO of VIDI-TO

• VIDI-TO will spend the fresh investment on the continued development and global sale of VIDI X tool across the world.

CEE startups are initially focusing on international markets. Product companies are included in global industry rankings. Outsourcing companies work with clients from all over the world. At the same time, there is a very limited amount of available verified and regularized information on the CEE tech scene in English. In this text, AIN.Capital is committed to filling the gap with tech events in the CEE region.

AIN.Capital has selected the most important and largest IT events in Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland that will be held in 2023. Visiting these events will introduce you to the CEE technology scene, will help you find employees, clients, startups, investors, press coverage, useful acquaintances, and much more.

Have we missed any events? Let us know: lp@ain.ua

• Founded in 2020 by Vedran Cindric, Darko Blazevic, and Tea Sakic, Treblle develops an all-in-one platform for the entire API lifecycle that helps engineering and DevOps teams build, ship, and maintain REST-based APIs faster. It currently supports 16 languages.
• Recently, Treblle introduced its new product Treblle 2.0 which supports more than 17 programming languages and platforms and can be used on any existing or new API service. The platform helps to facilitate the integration of this cloud platform into the IT systems of large corporations.
• Since launching, the startup has collected over 15,000 users around the world. Every month, Treblle processes over 60 million API calls and is used on 5,000 different API services.
• The fresh round was led by Nauta Capital,  pan-European VC firm investing in B2B SaaS solutions with strong network effects, vertically focused enterprise tech transforming large industries and deep-tech applications to solve challenges faced by large enterprises.
• Treblle plans to spend the investment to hire 20 new people in Croatia and another 10 abroad in the next three months. After that, the goal is to go towards 50 employees in total.

• Founded in 2010, Gamepires is an independent video game development studio that creates video games with realistic graphics and gameplay. The studio’s survival game SCUM reached 250,000 sales in first 24 hours. In only 3 weeks, it reached over 1 million sales, making it the fastest selling new game on Steam at the time.

• The UK-based company Jagex acquired Gamepires for an undisclosed amount. The company is known as the developer of RuneScape, which amassed over 300 million player accounts and is a $1 billion lifetime revenue franchise. It now employs more than 450 people at its Cambridge headquarters.

“Partnering with Jagex provides us the opportunity to take SCUM to the next level. Jagex’s world-class reputation as a company where players drive game development matches our ethos. It will help us grow as entrepreneurs and as a studio. We’re extremely excited to see how we can build on everything we’ve achieved with SCUM so far and take the game to its full potential,”

Tomislav Pongrac, Creative Director and co-founder of Gamepires, comments.

• As the result of the acquisition, Jagex will use its deep expertise in community-driven games and its platform as an international publisher to accelerate SCUM as a leading open world survival title.

• Founded in 2020, by Zeljko Smitran, IE-Energy develops the first regional Virtual Power Plant as an aggregated network of decentralized power generating units, such as wind farms, solar parks, and combined heat and power units, as well as flexible power consumers and storage systems. 
• The €19.8 million grant from the European Commission will cover approximately 30% of the costs for the series of battery systems planned for construction around the city of Šibenik with a capacity of 100 MWh and 50 MW of power. The full capacity will be upgraded by 2024, and thetotal investment will amount to around €70 million. 
• As the EU Commission representatives emphasizes, the IE-Energy project is important because it will contribute to the modernization of the grid and increase the security of energy supply, for both Croatia and the EU.

• Juicefast was founded in 2018 by two brothers David and Marko Dravinec, who combined their separate business ventures Detox.hr and Zdravi obroci into a new company. 
• The startup claims that it produces technologically advanced natural detox juices and healthy meals, using high hydrostatic pressure (HHP) method. It allows preserving all the nutrients, enzymes, taste, color and texture of the product as much as possible. 

“Our desire is to help people get rid of the increasingly prominent problem of obesity with our quality products and education. At the same time, we support local family farms from which we obtain most of the raw materials, and ultimately we take care of nature by composting production by-products,”

David Dravinec, CEO of Juicefast, commented.

• €500,000 of the total amount in this round comes from Feelsgood. It is a Zagreb-based social impact investment fund that has approximately €30 million under its management.
• The fresh funds will be used by Juicefast to improve the production of fruit and vegetable fasting juices and healthy meals, and distribute its products to more users that want to regulate their weight and improve their health.

The decision to expand our presence into Croatia was a logical step in our business growth strategy. We have the opportunity to further expand staffing and capabilities in our software engineering, professional services, and customer support departments, as well as increase our ability to service current and future markets,

said Andriy Krupa, Chief Executive Officer at ELEKS.

• The company is currently hiring and seeking talented software specialists to grow its team in Croatia. There are 17 positions opened, including Middle/Senior QA Engineer, Data Analyst, Solution Architect (.NET).

About ELEKS

ELEKS is a global software development company with 17 offices across 13 countries and three continents – including Western Ukraine, Poland, Germany, Estonia, Croatia, United Kingdom, USA, Canada, and UAE.

According to the research of AIN.Capital, at the beginning of 2022, ELEKS took 11th place among the largest outsourcing companies in Ukraine. The local team comprised over 1,970 people.

• The company raised $200 million from private equity firm One Equity Partners in Series A round. According to Infobip, this is the first external investment round.
• The investment will help Infobip to further enhance the company’s products and develop engineering expertise.
• Among Infobip’s Ukrainian customers are Rozetka, Citrus.ua, MOYO, Uklon, Uber, Zakaz.ua, Ukreximbank, PZU Ukraine, Alfa Insurance (Ukraine).
• Infobip said that the deal is one of the most notable in the history of Series A round investments in European tech companies, as it exceeds the typical amount of funding for this series by 20 times.

“Solutions in this field can be enhanced endlessly, and the additional investment will help accelerate the development of new features, which is ongoing. This will allow our customers to always be one step ahead by applying the best global solutions first,” comments Ruslan Koval, Infobip’s CEO in Ukraine.

About the company

Infobip is a global communications platform that enables businesses to build connected customer experiences across all stages of the customer journey at scale, with easy and contextualized interactions over customers’ preferred channels. In 2020, Infobip has 65 offices on six continents.