Irina Achim
We collect the choices of investors and investment funds in Romania and we present them to understand the best startups from our country.
We talked with Cristian Munteanu, Managing Partner at Early Game Ventures, one of the largest and most active investment funds in Romania.
Cristian Munteanu heads the venture capital investment fund Early Game Ventures (EGV), the most active investor in tech startups in Romania in 2021 and 2022 and the 7th most active VC fund in CEE, according to The 2022 European Capital Report.
Cristian Munteanu has 15 years of experience in marketing and advertising, working for international brands and coordinating projects in Germany, France, Austria and CEE countries. Over 10 years ago, Cristian left the marcom industry and entered the world of technology startups.
Since 2017, he started his activity as a professional investor and dedicated himself to the launch of Early Game, a VC fund that became active in January 2019.
Early Game Ventures (EGV) is an investment fund with risk capital (venture capital) financed through the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020 and co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund. Early Game Ventures' investments so far include Questo, Meetgeek.ai, Profluo, Licenseware, Bunnyshell, OxidOS, Milluu, DRUID.
See their choices below of the best promising startups right now in the Romanian ecosystem.
Licenseware
"Licenseware's IT asset management application ecosystem is a best-in-class product that has managed to establish itself as a landmark on the international market in a very short time."
Licenseware is a Bucharest startup that helps companies manage their costs associated with the use of software applications and licensing risks. At the end of 2022, it raised over 1 million EUR.
What does Licenseware do?
Through this first open ecosystem of software license management applications, companies reduce the cost, risk and complexity associated with enterprise software.
Their solutions facilitate quick and informed decision-making and enable organizations to control how they buy and use software.
Since its launch in 2020, Licenseware has focused on attracting its first customers, graduating from the How To Web and StepFWD accelerators and receiving multiple nominations for innovation in the IT asset management market.
OXID OS
"The Rust-based operating system developed by OxidOS has the potential to dramatically change the entire software production and deployment cycle in the automotive industry."
The OxidOS team is working on an operating system and software development tools for the automotive industry.
What does Oxid OS do?
Specifically, with the help of OxidOS, automotive integrators and OEM software companies will be able to reduce automotive software development time by up to 50% and development costs by 40%, while contributing to building safer cars.
The operating system and tools made available by the OxidOS team will allow developers to implement, verify and certify software for microcontrollers within the electronic controllers of cars faster and with a higher degree of safety.
OGRE.AI
"The Ogre.ai energy management platform meets the needs of a market with explosive growth: renewable energy producers, utility companies and prosumers."
In February 2022, the startup raised a 2 million EUR round led by EGV, with the participation of the London venture capital fund MMC and international business angel investors.
What does Ogre.ai do?
Ogre AI offers a technology that has the ability to forecast power generation, consumption, technological and commercial network losses and various anomalies in the system.
The Ogre AI team is also working on creating an energy price forecasting system that will help make decisions, based on concrete information, both at the energy network management level and at the trading level.
DRUID
"Conversational AI is a mature technology that has reached mass adoption, and Druid technologies are the only ones capable of connecting to data from a company's internal systems and delivering natural language responses, data and insights to a wide area of stakeholders."
As of 2019, DRUID was the first company to give voice to RPA bots, adding conversational skills to the world's first hyper-automation platform through its global alliance with UiPath, the market leader in robotic business process automation (RPA).
Currently, DRUID provides an advanced platform for building conversational business applications based on Artificial Intelligence, with more than 175 customers in various industries, in 25 countries and in more than 60 languages. The massive sales and support effort builds on a growing ecosystem of international partners, which has expanded by 60% to more than 160 partners in 2022.
What does Druid.ai do?
Since its launch in 2018, DRUID has aimed to provide the friendliest way to interact with RPA technology, through conversation, to facilitate the best experience for customers and employees around the world.
The company currently provides an end-to-end platform for developing AI-powered conversational business applications to increase employee productivity and deliver a total customer experience in the most intuitive way possible. Recently they announced a new 30 million EUR Series B round.
TOKINOMO
"Because the Tokinomo robotics platform can deliver data collected from the hottest point in the customer journey in conventional retail: the moment when a customer reaches out and grabs a product from the store shelf."
Romanian startup Tokinomo, which creates and distributes interactive solutions for in-store advertising campaigns, has raised $1.7 million in early 2022 from member investors TechAngels, Early Game Ventures and IPP. The investment will be used to create new solutions and accelerate global expansion.
What does Tokinomo do?
The startup aims to develop new retail marketing technology products that allow brands to generate more personalized and creative promotional campaigns, but also to obtain relevant data to define their audience.
Tokinomo robots were designed to diversify and modernize the advertising campaigns of FMCG brands in supermarket stores. Using motion, light and sound sensors, Tokinomo robots bring products to life on the supermarket shelf and enable them to communicate the brand message in a creative and effective way.
Tokinomo currently creates and distributes a proprietary brand activation solution that promotes products in-store and helps increase sales by an average of 200% without price discounts. With the help of local partners, Tokinomo robots are used in campaigns in more than 40 countries, with approximately 80% of revenues generated outside Romania.
