Florin Cașotă
Druid develops chatbots technology for large companies, among its clients being Banca Transilvania, BCR, Regina Maria, Dona, Asirom, Unicredit, BRD, EON, Agricover, Cărtureşti, Rompetrol, Garanti Bank, and others. Druid has strategic partnerships with EY, but also with KMPG, PWC, or Deloitte and Capgemini. The company also has technical partnerships with Microsoft and UIPath, which promote smart Druids on their platforms.
"The founder's business experience, team cohesion, and expertise in building technological products have given us confidence that Druid will be a success story," said Radu Stoicoviciu, EGV Partner. "Chatbots technology has matured and reached the point where the value it creates is quantifiable by corporate clients, especially in areas such as banking or healthcare. And the Druids are super-intelligent chatbots, which connect to the other IT systems of the companies and extract from them the insights and data they use in the dialogue with different stakeholders," he added.
Liviu Drăgan, the founder and CEO of Druid, said: "I think now was the right time for an institutional investor to enter the Druid shareholding. We had several investment funds that showed interest in Druid. We chose EGV, along with my belief that we can build a global company. Our plans are a rapid expansion in the United States and another round of investments in the middle of next year when we intend to raise somewhere between 8 and 10 million euros to a company valuation of over 20 million"
Liviu Drăgan is a well-known entrepreneur in the business world. Previously to Druid, he established and led TotalSoft, the manufacturer of Charisma, a market leader in the ERP field.
EGV’s investment in Druid is in perfect agreement with "Infrastructure for innovation," the investment thesis of EGV.
Early Game Ventures (EGV) is a venture capital firm funded mostly through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020, co-funded by the European Regional Development Fund.
The European Investment Fund (EIF) is part of the European Investment Bank Group and is the leading risk financier for Europe's SMEs through venture capital, collateral, and microfinance instruments. In Romania, the EIF implements financial instruments co-financed through structural and investment funds, such as JEREMIE 2007-2013, SME Initiative, ROP, JOP, NRDP.
The Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020 (POC) makes investments to address the needs and challenges raised by the low levels of economic competitiveness, in particular with regards to (a) insufficient support for research, development and innovation and (b) underdeveloped infrastructure for Information and Communication Technology. POC benefits from a € 1.33 billion allocation from the European Regional Development Fund.
