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, every week Emerging Europe brings you a round-up of the region’s start-up news.
Poland’s Alsendo invests in Romanian SaaS specialist Innoship
Poland-based and Abris Capital backed Alsendo, a Central European technology shipping solutions business, last week acquired a majority stake in Innoship, a Romanian SaaS delivery management platform.
Alsendo will team up with all four founders of Innoship, who are staying on board following the acquisition.
Innoship is a pure SaaS delivery management specialist founded in 2019, offering advanced technology solutions that optimise last-mile management through data intelligence for over 200 medium and large retailers in Europe.
The company will help drive Alsendo’s transition from reselling into a technology-driven, SaaS-focused business model.
At the same time, Innoship will benefit from Alsendo’s expertise in providing comprehensive shipping services and technological solutions for business customers, including e-commerce, marketplace and global enterprises.
The acquisition of Innoship follows those of Zaslat – a technology-enabled parcel delivery platform focused on consumers and corporate clients in Czechia and Slovakia – in September 2022, and Sendit, a parcel delivery platform for individual customers in Poland, in 2021.
This latest add-on is another step forward for Alsendo in targeting unique technology businesses with a focus on new SaaS products for SMEs and large enterprises.
The partnership also brings synergies between Alsendo and Innoship, such as the accelerated rollout of SaaS solutions in Poland and the consolidation of offerings provided by both companies to marketplaces across Central Europe and expands Alsendo’s reach into the Romanian market. In addition, the combined business will continue to benefit from the growth of the e-commerce market in Central Europe, which is driving the demand for logistics technology solutions.
“We continue to pursue our strategy of transitioning to a technology-driven business model,” says Aleksandra Zawadzka, CFO of Alsendo. “This transaction will allow us to provide advanced solutions to a broadened universe of clients to support their business activities. It will create a unique platform, offering wide range of tools for e-commerce customers – in particular larger businesses and marketplaces.”
“At Innoship, our purpose has always been to create the best product for our customers to enable them to better manage disruptions, accelerate growth and add new value to their own consumers in today’s rapidly changing world,” adds Daniel Nicolae, co-founder of Innoship.
“Our growth so far has been beyond our expectations and now we aim even higher. We are extremely grateful to the customers who are using our innovative technology and support us with feedback, but also to the investors who have guided us in the right direction. We are very excited about the partnership with Alsendo; together we will create the leading e-commerce shipping solutions technology business in Central Europe and beyond.”
Gridio: Tallinn-based smart energy start-up raise one million euros
Gridio, an Estonian smart energy start-up, has raised one million euros in a funding round led by The Sharing Group, Link Capital and Specialist VC. The investment will be used to launch the Gridio app in Europe.
The app, which provides insight into the best time to use electricity, makes it easy for consumers on dynamic tariffs to save money and contribute to tackling the current energy crisis.
Gridio’s primary product is a smart charging solution that makes it possible to automatically charge electric vehicles, such as Tesla, Volkswagen, Skoda and other brands, with the cheapest and cleanest electricity at home or at the office without additional hardware.
On average, owners of electric vehicles save about 30 per cent in costs on their energy bill when using Gridio.
Over time, the start-up noticed that people who do not own an electric car were still using the app to adjust their energy consumption at home. When families come home from work and school and want to turn on the washing machine or dishwasher, for example, they open the app to check whether it is an optimal time to do so.
“Over the next eight years, 200 million electric vehicles will be added to the roads worldwide,” says said Konrad Hanschmidt, CEO and co-founder of Gridio. “Shifting electric vehicle charging to times when prices are lowest, which usually corresponds to the highest renewable energy production, is one of the most simple and least disruptive ways to use more wind and solar energy.
“In Europe, this will be especially necessary this winter, when we will need to avoid peak hours energy as much as possible.”
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