Irina Achim
In this series we talked with investors and VC funds from Romania to discover their startup recommendations. What are the most promising startups from the Romanian ecosystem?
Sparking Capital is an investment fund with interest in early stage startups in the pre-seed and seed phase. They are industry agnostic, but prefer the area of consumer internet, marketing-tech, supply chain-tech, fintech, circular economy and tech startups that have a different business model and are ready to quickly develop internationally .
Sparking Capital's mission is to contribute to the development of the local entrepreneurial ecosystem through constant investment, transfer of know-how and skills, coaching and mentoring for founding teams, directly or through partners, so that they reach their potential.
At the same time, the company aims to provide investors with gross returns superior to other asset classes.
Sparking Capital obtained the authorization from the Financial Supervisory Authority of Romania as an alternative investment fund, in order to strengthen the operating framework on the local capital market.
By the middle of 2023, they have as a major objective 4-5 new investments and a budget of over 3.5 million EUR.
Sparking Capital's portfolio currently includes 12 local startups, which come from the travel-tech, consumer-tech, marketing-tech, fin-tech, prop-tech, intelligent automation, fitness-tech, AI technology for recognition of speech, circular economy. These include Questo, Evertoys, ProductLead, Symphopay, Bright Spaces, EcoTree, Instant Spaces, Bankata, Vatis Tech, Sypher, KFactory and Hyperhuman.
Vlad Sarca is a serial entrepreneur with experience in management. He founded and managed several companies in the area of healthcare, international recruitment and real estate, is a member of economic boards and has been a partner at Sparking Capital for 3 years.
Here are the most promising 5 Romanian startups from Sparking Capital.
Vatis Tech
"Because they created the most accurate artificial intelligence algorithm that transforms voice data into text for the Romanian language and they also launched similar algorithms for English, French, German and Spanish with which they will conquer international markets."
The Romanian startup Vatis Tech has completed a new round of funding worth 650,000 EUR, reaching a total investment of 850,000 EUR in 15 months, a company whose revenues increased 10 times in 2022 compared to 2021, and the growth rate for the last quarter being over 30%. The plans are to expand to the markets of Germany, Spain or France.
What does Vatis Tech do?
Vatis Tech is recognized for developing AI-based voice recognition technologies that rival global giants such as Google or Microsoft in terms of accuracy.
The technological advancements made by Vatis Tech over the past year enable all companies, whether private or government institutions, to automate processes and entire audio data streams achieving cost efficiency, much better response times to customer needs, information extraction key in real time but also the generation of new sources of income.
The company recently launched new transcription model for domains with very specific terms, such as medical or legal, but also for an economic sector with huge transcription needs - call centers.
Questo
"Because more and more tourists and locals are using their product to explore cities around the world."
Since 2017 Questo has brought play and adventure into the lives of 100,000 people so far, from 140 cities, and that has attracted 300 story creators, including Hollywood or Netflix screenwriters .
What does Questo do?
Questo is an online platform for urban exploration games. It basically challenges you to discover the cities you visit through challenges. The Romanian startup received $1.5 million in investment at the beginning of 2021, and has so far attracted more than $2.2 million in total funding from business angels and investment funds.
Moreover, Questo was awarded by Booking, collaborated with the Alba Iulia town hall in Romania and received various awards.
Questo has exploration games in over 200 cities around the world, from New York to Govora Baths in Romania, romantic themes where travellers can explore Paris, or themes where they can hunt the Illuminati around Rome.
Filmchain
"They're bringing blockchain technology to the world of film and it's gaining traction."
Filmchain is a London-based company founded by two Romanians that manages revenues from the international film and television industry.
What does Filmchain do?
The platform helps the entire film production and distribution chain to automate the process of funding allocation and copyright management, and gives each party involved the ability to track in real time the performance and profitability of the content created.
FilmChain's platform is used by distribution houses and independent film producers worldwide, and the company has raised over £1.6M to date from investors including HearstLab, SFC Capital and FintechCircle.
The company also had 2 partnerships at the Berlin Film Festival with Alamode Film Distribution (Germany) and Lumière (Benelux), two leading film and TV series distributors in Europe. FilmChain's client portfolio includes high-profile names such as Eurimages, German Film Fund and Oscar-nominated films such as "Colectiv" and "Animal Kingdom".
Druid
"They have benefited from a significant round of funding and are enjoying the appreciation of their users."
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.
Cyscale
"A startup from Cluj that has had a good evolution in recent years and operates on a market that is growing rapidly."
Cyscale, a developer of cloud application and data protection software solutions, secured 3 million EUR in funding in May 2022, with the investment round used to grow the team, develop the product and the company internationally, in particular in the UK market.
This is Cyscale's third round of funding in just three years since its launch. The startup started its acceleration process with Techcelerator, attracting support and successive rounds of funding: 100,000 EUR in 2019 from GapMinder and 350,000 EUR through SeedBlink in 2021 (GapMinder being the lead investor). Moreover, among Techcelerator alumni, Cyscale is the startup with the most extensive validation brought in less than three years by international investors to an accelerated startup.
What does Cyscale do?
Cyscale is a startup that develops cloud data protection software solutions and performs data risk analysis. The solution has a microservices architecture; the built technology can be easily integrated into existing software using standardized APIs (application programming interface). Basically, the company supports digitization and helps companies that want to migrate their processes to the cloud to do so safely.
Cyscale was also among the winners of the Startups cohort of the BCR-InnovX accelerator in 2020, receiving the title of "Best Technology Startup 2020" from Modex.
