Emerging Europe’s start-up scene is thriving: new money and new ideas are coming onto the market all the time. To keep you up to date with the latest investments, innovations, movers and shakers, each Monday Emerging Europe brings you a round-up of the region’s start-up news.
Hunch: Serbian ads automation platform raises funds for European, US expansion
Belgrade-based ads automation platform Hunch has closed a four million euros investment round led by Catalyst Romania, one of the most important venture capital funds in the region, alongside co-investors Euroventures, North Base Media, SeedBlink and South Central Ventures.
The company will use this investment to triple its sales team and increase marketing investments, to support its expansion plans in Europe and into the US.
Hunch provides a creative ads automation platform that, for the first time, combines precise consumer personalisation, dynamic creatives assembly at scale, real-time social media placement, product-feed data science and end-to-end collaboration workflow.
With Hunch, brands and their agency partners can efficiently build and deliver an exponential set of individualised journeys and personalised experiences. Proven to increase interaction, conversion to revenue and lifetime value, with the right ad creatives, at the right time, Hunch empowers global consumer facing corporations to dominate social commerce.
“Driven by the rapid rise of social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok and the rest, in order to compete in today’s market companies have been faced with a difficult task of creating and delivering a staggering amount of engaging creatives and videos that now need to be personalised, contextualised, and relevant,” says Siniša Rakovič, founder and CEO of Hunch.
“Over 100 global brands and agencies across Europe, North America, Latin America, and Asia have successfully partnered with Hunch to deliver highly tailored creative campaigns that perform radically better and drive increased revenues through personalisation. We are thrilled to have Catalyst Romania and the rest of the investor group help us accelerate our technology roadmap that will support our customers in growing their revenue faster.”
AIP Seed 2.0: Early-stage fund ready to invest 25 million euros in CEE
AIP Seed 2.0 – an early-stage investment fund – will allocate 25 million euros in private capital from a newly-established fund to promote and foster the development of start-ups from Central and Eastern Europe.
The fund will back over 30 start-ups annually and offers financing and mentoring from co-investors and experts from its Competence Hubs. Thanks to a simplified process, AIP Seed promises to analyse and evaluate each application within a week.
AIP Seed is one of the first seed funds in Europe with a simple investment model that supports start-ups in their earliest stages. The fund was established over a decade ago by Dariusz Żuk, a start-up pioneer in Poland. Today, AIP Seed wants to take another step forward and become an initial investor in Europe’s best start-ups, cementing its position as a leading European early-stage investment fund.
“Together with private co-investors, we want to allocate 25 million euros to the most interesting start-ups from CEE over the next three years,” says Żuk. “We are eager to look at projects that have been pre-validated on the market. We invest up 250,000 euros in early-stage start-ups, which often find it difficult to get funding due to the high risk profile.”
AIP Seed engages its co-investors (experts in given industries) at each stage of a project, bringing in exclusive capital, knowledge and know-how. In addition, the fund runs its own competence hubs which support start-ups in areas such as growth, people and culture, finance and law.
Projects from CEE can be submitted to AIP Seed at aipseed.com.
Proportunity: Helping one million people hop on the property ladder by 2030
Romanian-founded Proportunity, a fintech solution that combines machine learning and finance, is looking to attract 300.000 euros on the SeedBlink crowd investing platform. The financing round is supported by two lead investors, Venture Friends and Kibo Ventures, with an input of 1.17 million euros each.
The funding will be used to double marketing impact and launch two new products this year, Rent to Buy and 0% deposit.
“Our vision is to make property buying as simple as renting,” says Vadim Toader CEO and co-founder of Proportunity.
“The current product is designed for people that have a five per cent deposit but are struggling to get a large enough mortgage to get the home they truly want. Proportunity helps customers buy smarter, due to our machine learning tech, and buy sooner with our mortgage booster. The machine learning tech helps buyers to find homes with high growth potential, reassuring them that they’re making a smart investment for the biggest financial decision of their lives.
“I’m happy to see the impact of our services and hope more investors will join us on our journey to help one million people onto the property ladder by 2030.”
Proportunity’s online platform combines machine learning and finance to disrupt the traditional borrowing system in UK. Since being founded in 2018, it has already financed more than 117 million euros in property purchases.
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