• Wonder Dynamics was co-founded in Los Angeles, by two Serbians Nikola Todorovic and Tye Sheridan. The startup develops an AI production tool, Wonder Studio, with the aim to allow indie filmmakers to produce blockbuster-level VFX on a lower budget. Wonder Dynamics was previously supported by Horizon Ventures, Founders Fund, and MaC Venture Capital.

• According to Wonder Dynamics, its tool makes the visual effects process more accessible and affordable by developing AI and machine learning tools that allow filmmakers to produce VFX and CGI elements faster and at a significantly lower price point. Wonder Studio currently offers a plug-in that connects with professional 3D tools such as Autodesk Maya and Blender to deliver streamlined high-quality character workflows.
• Autodesk is the American multinational software corporation that provides software products and services for the architecture, engineering, construction, manufacturing, media, education, and entertainment industries. Autodesk is headquartered in San Francisco, California, and has offices worldwide.

The current misconception is that AI is a one-click solution, and that’s why we are excited to join a company that, at its core, supports the iterative nature of 3D and storytelling. We put a lot of effort into building an AI tool that does not replace artists, but rather speeds up creative workflows, makes things more efficient, and helps productions save costs. We firmly believe that our alignment with Autodesk will only amplify that vision and further push the boundaries of ethical AI and emerging technology in Media & Entertainment,

Nikola Todorovic, co-founder and CEO of Wonder Dynamics, said.

Autodesk’s acquisition of Wonder Dynamics aims to enable more creators to incorporate 3D animated characters into their projects and stories. The goal is to reduce the learning curve and automate traditionally complex and time-consuming tasks. The exact amount of the deal is left undisclosed.

• Webglobe was co-founded in 1999 by Igor Strečko and Juraj Hanták. Now, it manages almost 300,000 registered domains belonging to almost 100,000 clients a nd registers approximately 10% of national domains in Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Serbia. Webglobe offers a wide range of products from domains and web hosting to marketing and security tools for digital business of small and medium-sized businesses.

The deal details:

group.one headquartered in Sweden with offices in 12 countries. It serves over 2 million customers, predominantly small- and medium-size enterprises and provides digital solutions such as Software as a Service and Hosting. The company has grown its revenues to over €300 million in the financial year ending 30th September 2023.

The CEE region is a vibrant space offering immense potential for providing digital solutions to small businesses. This strategic acquisition aligns perfectly with our growth ambitions. With Webglobe’s strong position in the region and talented team, we are confident in our ability to accelerate growth and innovation in this dynamic region,

Daniel Hagemeier, CEO of group.one, commented.

The sellers are Webglobe founder Igor Strečko and investment fund from the portfolio of Sandberg Capital, a Slovak private equity firm established in 2014. It focuses on small and medium-sized companies in the sectors of IT, telecommunications, agriculture, education, and retail. Sandberg Capital manages more than €340 million on behalf of private and institutional investors.

Advisors on the transaction on the seller side were investment bank Raymond James, law firms Barger Prekop (Slovakia); Kocián, Šolc, Balaštík (Czechia); and Moravčević, Vojnovič and partners (Serbia) and financial advisor BDO. The deal amount was undisclosed.

• Founded in December 2021 by Ivan Ralic and Sandra Idjoski, Collabwriting develops a platform enabling users to collect, organize, and collaborate around key knowledge. The idea is to create a dynamic environment where insights and data are delivered to users whenever they need it.
• Among Collabwriting’s customers are diverse professions such as law, consultancy, and R&D. Additionally, the startup boasts over 1,700 weekly active users.

• The new investment was led by Polish VC fund SMOK Ventures, that recently closed its $25 million second fund for CEE startups. A syndicate including Underline Ventures, Credo, Fiedler, Forthech, Startup Wise Guys, V7 Capital, and angel investor Xenia Muntean from Planable also participated in the round.

The startup will use the funding to develop Collabwriting for Teams, grow the current team, and expand their user base, as well as incorporate new AI features.

• OTA Sync is a cloud-based software company offering complete web & mobile management solutions for hotels and private accommodations. To accomplish this, the company created four solutions: Property Management System, Booking Engine, Channel Manager, and a Guest experience app. Together, these tools bring sales, operations, guest experience, and property management.
• OTA Sync was founded in 2021 in Estonia, with a team in Serbia by Djordje Jevtic and Ilija Milovic. Currently, the startup has 2,000 users in 17 markets.

• Presto Ventures, a Prague-based investment company empowering talented startup founders from the wider CEE region, led the fresh investment. The round was also joined by TS Ventures Fund, DSI Group of Business Angels, Startup Wise Guys, Katapult Accelerator.

“This is the first advanced hotel tech transformation period. With this round of investment, we will prove to hoteliers worldwide that technology is a necessary, useful part of the team and management process – not something that complicates their life,”

Djordje Jevtic, OTA Sync’s co-founder & CEO.

• The funding will be used for market expansion across Europe and Latin America, as well as for new product development.

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 2021 LeadDelta develops a platform that lets B2B professionals and teams manage their network and extract value from it at the right time. Dashboard, sidebar, and smart inbox allow users to tag their LinkedIn connections to an app 11,000+ individuals and teams use.
• The startup claims that with the help of its solution, users can more effectively sell, employ, and market their products and services through a unified network of contacts. In 2022 LeadDelta won the #1 SaaS App, voted by half a million people on Product Hunt. 
• Among the investors is Tihomir Bajic, the founder of the organization Serbian Entrepreneurs, which was created with the intention for Serbian entrepreneurs in the diaspora to boost the development of the startup ecosystem in Serbia and help other entrepreneurs abroad with their suggestions, experiences, contacts, and networking.

“As a person who fostered numerous for-profit and non-profit enterprises through stewarding community efforts, it wasn’t until LeadDelta that I got the first smart and dedicated application for targeted network outreach. This is not only an idea I believe in. It powers how I interact daily as a professional. I’m proud to be the first investor and the angel syndicate lead,”

Tihomir Bajic comments the investment. 

• With the fresh funding round, LeadDelta aims to revolutionize how teams sell, hire, fundraise, and market their products and services. The startup is poised to continue growing and expanding into new market segments.

• Founded in 2021 by Miloš Zlatković and Aleksandar Buha, Mily Tech is a delivery analytics platform. It collects, connects, and enriches delivery data to help parcel delivery companies reach great performance in the last mile. Essentially, it allows to quickly identify possibilities for reduced costs, improved delivery processes, and confident growth.
• The startup has offices in Belgrade and Munich, with some of the biggest courier companies in the Balkan region as their clients.
• South Central Ventures is the lead investor in this round. It is a Serbia-based fund with the focus on early-stage high-growth companies with excellent management teams. The fund recently led a €1M seed round for Dutch e-commerce startup Pixyle AI. Katapult Accelerator supported the round.

“A significant portion of the funds will be used to expand the team, bringing in new talent and expertise to further drive innovation and differentiation in the last-mile delivery industry. The company is committed to bringing a fresh perspective and a customer-centric approach to the industry, and the new hires will help support this mission,”

the company commented.

• The fresh funding will allow Mily Tech to expand across Europe and grow its team.

• The Serbian tech ecosystem is worth €909 million in combined enterprise value in 2022. This is €165 million than the year before and more than double the value of €341 million back in 2020.

• There are a total of 243 startups and scaleups that are headquartered in Serbia.
• Such ventures as Solrise Finance, Tenderly, Streamflow, Seven Bridges, mBrainTrain, Videobolt, Yolo Technology, B2Bee, and Blinking are among the most prominent in the ecosystem.
• Startups in the Fintech and Healthtech sectors have raised the most investment in Serbia in the last five years. Fintech startups managed to secure €65.3 million since 2018 and Healthtech followed with €59.4 million in funding. Other important industries are media, marketing, and security.

• In 2022, Serbia-based startups have raised a total of €39.6 million in funding. The average financing value is still unsteady with the most amount of funding in the region coming from Series A to Series C scale-ups. Pre-seed and seed investments only reaching up to €4 million a year.

• Among the most active investors in the region are South Central Ventures, Global Finance, StatLabs, Innovation Fund Serbia, and Endava.

• Founded in 2018 by Svetlana Kordumova, a PhD in AI and Computer vision from the University of Amsterdam, Pixyle develops AI-based platform that helps fashion retailers with image recognition solutions to deliver a better online shopping experience, boost e-commerce sales, and improve efficiency in catalog management.
• Pixyle AI solution generates tags which can be easily absorbed into a retailer’s existing e-commerce stack, making their search, and discovery platform run seamlessly and faster.

“In search, understanding customers’ shopping intent is vital. We are laser focused on this, using neural networks that train Pixyle’s AI algorithms to see and interpret images exactly how humans would. We’re trying to make online shopping as frictionless as possible, and hopefully a bit more fun and enjoyable, by letting people easily find what they are really looking for,”

Svetlana Kordumova, founder and CEO of Pixyle AI commented.

• Pixyle AI has offices in Amsterdam and North-Macedonia, among its clients are Tendam, Otrium, and Miinto. Since launching Pixyle AI has tagged over 250 million images, improving the relevance and accuracy of product attributes with 95% accuracy, and increasing conversions by 10% on average.
• The fresh round was led by Serbian South Central Ventures that focuses on early-stage high-growth companies operating in fintech, agritech, advertising technology, SaaS, and has offices in Belgrade, Zagreb and Skopje. The fund’s ticket is up to €5 million.
• Pixyle AI will spend the fresh investment to further expand its geographic reach, enhance the product offering, and move into new verticals.

• Established in 1989, the Belgrad-based Saga Group is one of the leading system integrators in Bulgaria that provides ICT professional services and business solution in infrastructure, telecommunications, virtualization, business computing, data centers, client desktop solutions, social collaboration, electronic banking, contact center, multichannel access systems, mobile offices fields. 
• Saga Group operates in Serbia, Montenegro, Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and has over 400 employees. The company has also built a portfolio of digital products, including its own IP for digital banking, Fintense, created by Saga’s subsidiary NF Innova, which is an omnichannel digital banking platform. 
• Among Saga’s partners there are such companies as Oracle, Cisco, DELL, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Juniper, VMWare. 
• Noventiq, previously known as Softline Holding, is the London-based solutions and services provider in digital transformation and cybersecurity. The company enables, facilitates and accelerates digital transformation for its customers’ businesses, connecting over 75,000 organizations from all sectors.
• The company has 3,900 employees, work in almost 60 countries throughout Asia, Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. The company delivered turnover of approximately US$1.1 billion in the fiscal year of 2021. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange following its successful IPO in October 2021.
• According to the transaction, Noventiq brings over 400 expert staff for its further acceleration, and strengthening its operations and competences in digital infrastructure, managed solutions and services in Central and Eastern Europe.

“Saga’s fintech solutions are about transforming legacy banks and institutions into digital leaders, and thanks to this transaction, our customers from a wide array of sectors will be able to benefit from Saga’s extraordinary technology,”

Herve Tessler, president and COO of Noventiq said. 

• With this acquisition, Saga Group’s customers will have access to full Noventiq’s solutions and services.

• Founded in 2020 by Serbs Luka Ivicevic and Sir Gabriel Holbach, Index Health is a telemedicine company that develops fully personalized doctor and nutritionist led programs that help to diagnose health issues and plan to prevent diseases.
• Index Health claims that its data-driven approach is close to three times cheaper than prescription-based treatment of chronic diseases, saving $4,000 per year for its customers. 

“One million members in 3 years is our target, and it is feasible, no question about that. The root-cause method proves its superior effectiveness to the ubiquitous prescription medicine. Our first cohort of test patients registered an 80% improvement via the root-cause method compared to what was tried before with chronic disease treatment,”

Luka Ivicevic, co-founder and CEO of Index Health said.

• The fresh round was led by Bulgarian early-stage VC fund LAUNCHub Ventures, investing in CEE and SEE technology startups, and Poland-based Inovo Venture Partners. 
• The company plans to spend part of the new funding on the recruitment of medical professionals, and engineering talent for product development.
• Index Health also aims to expand its operations launched in Florida to all 50 US states, and continue with certified laboratory partnerships in each state.

• HTEC was founded in September 2008 by Aleksandar Cabrilo and Dusan Kosic in Serbia. Now it is headquartered in San Francisco, with development centers across Eastern Europe, design and consultancy offices in the US, UK, Scandinavia, the Netherlands, and development centers across Southeast Europe. 
• HTEC’s team now has more than 2,000 employees globally and provides product design and development, hardware and firmware engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, and scalable cloud platforms services.  
• Previously, in January 2022, HTEC raised $140 million from growth equity investment firm Brighton Park Capital. The funds helped to scale the company’s capacities to serve its growing global customer base through acquisitions and organic growth.
• Now, HTEC acquires Mistral Technologies, an IT solutions firm with over 300 experts in Bosnia and Herzegovina that provides Product Development as a Service. It was founded in 2011 by Mersed Camdzic in Sarajevo.

“After building a successful business for the last 12 years in Bosnia and Herzegovina, we realized that a partnership with HTEC Group would bring great value both to the market of Bosnia & Herzegovina and to our company,”

Mistral’s co-founder and CEO Mersed Camdzic commented on the deal.

• The acquisition is set to help Mistral to complement and expand HTEC’s experience in the field of financial technologies, telecommunications, multimedia and other key industries.

• By the end of 2022, the company plans to hire over 60 engineers working on Embedded, Java, Mobile, IoT, and other technologies.
• Teams from the new center will be involved in the company’s long-term projects in the automotive, telecom, fintech, and other industries. Intellias is currently looking for Java developers in Serbia.
• The Serbian office will be located in Novi Sad, the country’s second-largest city.
• The first Intellias subsidiary outside of Ukraine was opened in Poland in 2019. In total, the company has eight such centers, six of which are located in Ukraine — in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, Kharkiv, Ivano-Frankivsk, and Dnipro. In 2021, the Intellias team grew by 70%.
• Intellias is one of the largest Ukrainian tech companies, with 2,500 employees. Over 2 billion people use the technology products developed by Intellias engineers.