Category Archives: Europe

Bulgaria, Europe, Funding & Acquisitions, In focus, Misc, News, Startups

LAUNCHub Ventures shuts its 2nd fund at EUR 18M

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Bulgarian VC fund LAUNCHub Ventures has closed its new €18 million second  fund to invest in startups in Bulgaria and Southeast Europe. The existing portfolio companies will benefit as well.

The first LAUNCHub fund of €9M was founded in 2012. It was started as pre-seed tickets up to €200,000. Yet, thanks to this new fund, the venture can deploy into the seed space with investments in the €300,000 to €700,000 scope, expansible to €2M per firm. The aim of the venture’s strategy is to become the obvious first choice for entrepreneurs in their region. The founders believe  there is a fantastic opportunity in the currently underserved South Eastern Europe region, which is quickly growing. LAUNCHub has already lavishly supported the growth of the Bulgarian and regional startup ecosystems.

LAUNCHub’s investors include: the European Investment Fund (EIF), the founders of Bulgarian software corporation Telerik, and many other investors whose names have not been disclosed. The venture is headed up by: Belov, Todor Breshkov, Rumen Iliev, Stanislav Sirakov, and Stephane Gantchev.

LAUNCHub’s portfolio currently features companies in an assorted set of fields, such as: video distribution platform Fite; workflow automation service connecting hundreds of cloud applications Cloudpipes; an online platform connecting pharmacies and pharmaceutical firms Doctrina; UI middleware tool for gaming studios Coherent Labs.

Ecommerce, Europe, Funding & Acquisitions, Germany, In focus, News

Foodpanda got sold to Delivery Hero

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In its history this startup gathered $ 318 million, including $ 100 million from Goldman Sachs. On the other hand Delivery Hero, which bought Foodpanda shares from Rocket Internet, earned a total of $ 1.33 billion. Another consolidation on the market of on-line food ordering, during which a larger giant acquires a smaller giant. The objective? To gain exposure to Asian markets, where Foodpanda has developed widely.

The terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2016. Yet, it is known that Foodpanda will add 20 new countries in Eastern Europe, MENA and Asia to Delivery Hero’s portfolio. So far it has been processing about 2 million orders per month within 22 countries, claiming to be the market leader in 17 of them. The combined group is supposed to process over 20 million orders across 47 countries per month.

Both, Delivery Hero and Foodpanda, are headquartered in Berlin and started very much as rivals. Nowadays Europe is home to many active international firms in the online food takeaway industry. They are counting on their local bounds, established customer relations and widespread restaurant networks to eliminate new competition.