Made in Emerging Europe: Scalarr, CloudTalk, Questo

Emerging Europe’s start-up scene is thriving: new money is pouring into 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 handy round-up of the region’s start-ups which closed financing rounds over the previous seven days.

Ukrainian-US start-up Scalarr gets funding to take anti-fraud software to Asia

Co founded in 2018 by Inna Ushakova (CEO) and Yuriy Yashunin (CPO), Scalarr uses machine learning to check impressions, clicks, installs, and post-install data for fraud patterns and detect ad fraud, preventing marketing losses.

The company has now raised 6.2 million euros and plans to strengthen and expand its presence in Asia along with targeting new and bigger programmatic advertising markets.

Scalarr’s fraud detecting solution, which according to the company can detect up to 60 per cent more instances of fraud than conventional methods on the market, is already used by advertising and gaming companies such as Joom, Futureplay, Goodgame Studios and Huuuge Games.

Slovakian CloudTalk raises 6 million euros for cloud-based call centre software

The Bratislava-based start-up CloudTalk has raised new funding in a Series A round led by henQ and joined by Point Nine Capital.

Building its own virtual phone suite that integrates with CRMs, the company is able to save between two and three minutes per call by providing key information to customer service and sales teams in the moment and then providing quick and easy updates afterwards.

“Instead of going the traditional route and being dependent on third-party vendors like Twilio, we decided to build our own infrastructure, giving us better control over voice quality and enabling us to deliver this promise to our customers,” says co-founder Martin Malych.

CloudTalk already has customers in more than 80 countries, including big name organisations like Glovo, OYO, and Fujitsu.

With the completed Series A, the company is announcing ambitious new plans.

“Our plans are to triple our headcount, develop multiple new integrations and set up an AI-focused Innovations Lab that will help us bring innovations to the long-outdated business telephony market,” Mr Malych concludes.

Romanian start-up Questo raises 1.2 million euros for city exploration games

Questo has raised 1.2 million euros from Early Game Ventures with support from Sparking Capital, two funds based in Bucharest.

The company offers games aimed at both tourists and locals which help them discover and learn about cities on their own. Resembling a tour, the players are expected to solve riddles based on their surroundings. Doing so, players can “unlock” new places with stories that mix fact and fiction.

Games are created by individual creators or in partnership with businesses (tour operators, attractions, airlines) on a revenue share basis. New games are added every week.

During the pandemic, the company has doubled its reach. At the beginning of 2020 it was operating in 40 cities around Europe. Now, it is present in over a 100 cities across four continents.

The company hopes that with the new funding, they could double again this year.

“We like to think of it like Steam for real-world games, where our players are the main characters, and the local storytellers are the game developers. Currently, our primary focus is on exploration games, but the options are endless,” says Alex Govoreanu, the startup’s CEO and co-founder.

Founded in 2017, Questo was the winner of the “Disruptive Hospitality” award from UN’s World Tourism Organisation in 2019.

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