Serbian startup Hunch, raises €4m led by Catalyst Romania Fund II to accelerate its growth

Hunch, based in Belgrade, Serbia, provides a creative ads automation platform that, for the first time, combines precise consumer personalization, 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 individualized journeys and personalized 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. Hunch has helped its clients deliver over a billion of personalized creative assets and execute over 50 thousand personalization campaigns.

Engaging consumers in personalized ways is critical for all B2C marketers, yet this goal has remained difficult to achieve at internet scale, since customer, product and creative data sets are trapped in multiple departments and in disparate information silos. “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 personalized, contextualized, and relevant. 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 personalization. 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.” said Sinisa Rakovic, founder and CEO of Hunch.

“Hunch has positioned itself as a category leader in the new dynamic cross-platform ad personalization segment. We are impressed by the Company’s bold vision to revolutionize how advertisers can engage with consumers in more precise and actionable ways, in a privacy-first and transparent manner. We are excited to partner with Sinisa and the Hunch team,” added Sever Totia, Partner (3TS Capital Partners).  

In preparation for the next stage of growth, Hunch is honored to attract and add two venerable industry leaders to its Board of Directors: Rob Norman, former CEO GroupM North America and Craig Atkinson, former COO at Tinuiti. Both will play pivotal roles in helping Hunch with growth strategies, thought leadership, and maximizing its massive market opportunity.

“We are delighted to announce the largest round led by Catalyst Fund II thus far, and the first investment by the fund in the SEE region outside Romania. This sets a new benchmark for cooperation among regional funds, and also with Seedblink, the most active tech investment platform in CEE,” added Marius Ghenea, Managing Partner of Catalyst Romania.

Hunch is a leading provider of creative ad personalization automation software. The Company’s end-to-end platform enables brands and agencies to deliver millions of individualized creative assets, at the highest scale, with the fastest throughput, into the relevant social media distribution channels. Over 100 customers have generated industry-leading conversion improvements and revenue increases using Hunch.

Catalyst Romania is a leading venture capital investor in Romanian technology companies that have the potential to become regional leaders or global challengers. Catalyst was the fund manager who raised the first Romanian venture fund backed by the JEREMIE Romania initiative in 2012. Catalyst Romania Fund II will also primarily target investments in high growth sectors including Technology & Internet, Media & Communications and Technology-Enabled Services. Catalyst Romania is an affiliate of 3TS Capital Partners, which serves as an extension of the Catalyst team and provides international expansion support for portfolio companies in Europe and the US. For further information, please visit www.catalystromania.com. Catalyst Romania Fund II SCSp (“Catalyst Romania” or “Catalyst Romania Fund II”) is an alternative investment fund managed by Catalyst II GP S.à.r.l. acting as an alternative investment fund manager, both companies being organized under the Luxembourg law.