Hi! Welcome to the place with the latest updates on CEE Startup & VC Scene. Here, exclusively for you, we have prepared a monthly overview of closed funding rounds, new VC funds from the region, and other interesting startup events definitely worth your attention.

Ready? Let’s dig into the regional startup and venture capital happenings from the second month of 2022!

VC Transactions in CEE - 2021

CEE is experiencing record-breaking growth in recent years. 2021, was another big step for this market to become even more interesting and attractive for international investors. CEE companies attracted over €5.4B funding in over 1 200 rounds, so the total amount of investments on a year to year basis was doubled. Even when we exclude the Baltics region, these numbers are still astonishing: startups secured over €3.4B in over 750 rounds. Mentioned data concerns only disclosed rounds so the factual scale has been undoubtedly higher. Poland and Romania were leading both in terms of number of funding rounds as well as total investment amounts, but it shouldn’t be a surprise as Poland is the biggest ecosystem in CEE consisting of many active investors and interest startups, and Romania is a very hot market. Countries like Czechia, Ukraine, Croatia or Bulgaria are also worth distinguishing as popular investment destinations. Anyway, it has to be mentioned that these astonishing investment amounts were the result of mega-rounds (rounds over €100M), and among the biggest ones there are Romanian UiPath - €623M, Czech Rohlik - €190M, Ukrainian Grammarly - €174M, Polish Docplanner - €132M (estimation by Polish Development Fund). When it comes to investment directions, the most popular ones were: Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Internet Services, E-commerce, Finance, Shared-services, Delivery, Analytics.

Learn more insights into VC transactions in CEE in Vestbee's recent report 2021.

Leading CEE Funding Rounds Closed In February

mediately - is a Slovenian mobile and web app that makes drug information accessible to doctors and therefore helps them with making better decisions by organizing and simplifying complex medical content. (Series A - €7.2M from LAUNCHub Ventures, Piton Capital, Silicon Gardens, VentureFriends).
Productboard - is a Czech customer-centric product management platform for business teams that helps them to launch the right products to market faster and more efficiently. (Series D - €114M from Tiger Global Management, Sequoia Capital, Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Dragoneer Investment Group, Credo Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners).
Linker - Polish cloud-based fulfillment platform that connects sales channels and operations. (Seed - €3.3M from ff Venture Capital, Kogito Ventures, Market One Capital, Street Smart capital).
Ogre AI - Romanian AI-powered platform designed for energy management. ItI helps partners to predict production, consumption, network & technical losses and different kinds of anomalies. (Seed - €2M from Early Game Ventures, MMC Ventures).
CloudCart - Bulgarian all-in-one SaaS e-commerce platform that makes it easy to create a successful online store. (Undisclosed round from Elevator Ventures, New Vision 3 Fund).
Upacjenta - Polish healthcare platform with a goal to facilitate access to blood tests and COVID tests in Europe. The startup connects patients with medical specialists, allowing them to order and take a blood test at home. (Seed €4.4M from 10X Founders, Inovo Venture Partners, Mam Startup, YZR Venture Capital).
CodeMap - Croatian platform leveraging the power of no-code, low-code, and automation, and building software up to 10x faster with minimal or no coding skills required. (Pre-seed - €200K from Mate Rimac, SQ Capital Group).
KFactory - Romanian designer, manufacturer, and distributor of smart technology software used to enhance the manufacturing process. (Seed - €600K from Fortech Investments, SIF Transilvania, Sparking Capital).
Pointee - Czech startup providing automated analysis of RPA processes. (Seed - €1.2M from Earlybird Venture Capital, Tensor Ventures, Verissimo Ventures).
Scramjet - Polish cloud computing startup that provides a powerful computing engine ready to transform data of any size and from any source. (Seed - €1.2M from Sunfish Partners).
Tokinomo - Romanian startup providing robots for in-store experiential marketing campaigns. (Seed - €1.5M from Early Game Ventures, Instore Power Provider).
Mięsna Paczka - Polish direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce startup delivering organic meat from certified Polish farms to homes. (Seed - €1M from LT Capital, Żabka, Cofounder Zone).
ICEYE - Polish/Finish startup building and operating its own commercial constellation of radar imaging satellites. (Series D - €118M from Seraphim Space, BAE Systems, Kajima Ventures, Molten Ventures, OTB Ventures, True Ventures, C16 Ventures, Chione Ltd, Services Group of America, the UK’s National Security Strategic Investment Fund (NSSIF), Space Capital and Promus Ventures).
Hajde app - Albanian platform that makes fast and efficient food and grocery deliveries much more convenient. (Seed - €1M from Fasanara Capital).
Omnipack - Polish company that provides a full-stack fulfillment service for the eCommerce industry in Europe. (Debt financing - €2M from Flashpoint).

VC Funds Investing In CEE

Interesting Events For CEE Startup Community

VC Talks & Pitching Session by Vestbee - event discussing recent VC trends: Late-stage VCs go early-stage - reasons and impact on startups and VC funds hosted by 500 Startups Istanbul, Credo Ventures, OTB Ventures, Eleven Ventures, Next Road Ventures, and more leading VC funds. The second part of the event aims to present most interesting SaaS & Marketplace startups from CEE. It will take place online on March 17.
START Summit - is a European student-run conference for entrepreneurship and technology with the aim to actively promote innovation by connecting more than 5000 startups, investors, corporates and young talents. The event will take place from 24th to 25th of March.
0100 Conference - an in-person conference based in Prague that brings together PE and VC investors from Central and Eastern Europe, promotes knowledge sharing and networking with target startups. The event will take place from 5th to 6th of April.
Wolves Summit - a 2-day forum that aims to connect venture capital LPs with fund managers and high-growth scale-ups. The event will take place in Warsaw and online from 7th to 8th of April.

Other Regional News Worth Your Attention

One of the leading consultancy companies - Bain & Company has published a report on Corporate venture capital-backed investments, which shows the growing importance of corporate venture capital as they have grown to more than a fifth of total venture capital value present on the market.

Stay tuned for the next overview of interesting happenings in CEE VC and startup ecosystem!

#11 CEE Startup & VC News - February 2022

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