GapMinder fund selects 26 startups for its Techcelerator boot camp

Techcelerator is the first accelerator in Romania to provide also financial support to Romanian technology newly established companies through its strategic partner, GapMinder Venture Partners BV, co-financed through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020 and implemented by the European Investment Fund.

The selected start-ups to become part of the third cohort of Techcelerator will benefit from a first investment round of € 50.000 from the GapMinder Venture Partners BV fund, in exchange for a stake in the company, followed shortly by convertible note.

GapMinder has recently reached a threshold of € 36 million as fund size.

"In one year we managed to attract new investors and additional 10 million euros, with which we now have a fund size of 36 million and we hope to reach 40 million by the middle of this year. We grant 50,000 euros for each of the startups we select for the third round of Techcelerator, to which we can add up 50,000 to 100,000 euros depending on the performance of the companies during the acceleration program. Moreover, beside the five investments already made in seed and A series companies, for the next period we plan to invest in other businesses at this level of development", stated Dan Mihăescu, GapMinder Venture BV Founding Partner.

Techcelerator targets companies that are at least in the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) phase, with a strong team structure, solutions with a high market impact, and innovative technologies. Out of the applicants for the third round of the program, 69% are in MVP, pre-commercial or commercial phases, while 21% are in Proof of Concept (POC) phase.

With regard to the areas of interest for Techcelerator, 15% of the preselected startups have solutions from the MedTech area, and a similar percentage come from Property Tech (including smart homes), 13% are from FinTech segment, 11% - Retail / e-commerce, followed by Social solutions Engagement - 9%, Marketing Automation - 8%, AgriTech & Food - 6%, HR Tech - 6%, EduTech - 5%, software development - 5%, CleanTech & energy - 3%, gaming - 2%, cybersecurity - 1%.