• Read more on the investment HERE
  

• An interesting read about Visory's plans: "How Estonian startup Visory is using AI to turn cameras into sensors"
• Take a tour at Visory website HERE

Bob W raises €4 million for tech-enabled apartment hotels with custom sanitisation process

Bob W, a Helsinki-based hospitality startup, has raised €4 million in a seed round led by byFounders and joined by real estate investors NREP and Estonian firm Kaamos. Additional investors include Baltic VCs Superangel and United Angels, and other angels from Germany and the Nordics. 

The Finnish startup offers an accommodation hybrid between hotels and short-stay apartments or hosted homes like Airbnb, which guests can rent nightly, weekly, or monthly. Currently operating in Helsinki and Tallinn, the business outfits tech-enabled apartment hotels in popular neighborhoods. The hospitality company also touts its ‘Ridiculously Clean Standard’, a 63-step protocol to clean, sanitize, disinfect, and seal every suite. According to a press release, the program uses specialized equipment such as electrostatic disinfectant sprayers.

CEO and co-founder Niko Karstikko laid out the advantages of Bob W’s business model in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic: “Thanks to our combination of touchless hospitality features including online check-ins, 24/7 keyless entry and chat-based customer service, zero required face-to-face interaction, absence of shared spaces such as front desks, and the recently launched ‘Ridiculously Clean Standard’, Bob W is the smartest, safest, and cleanest hospitality choice in the new normal.”

With plans to surpass 1,000 units across the Nordics, Baltics, and the UK over the next two years, the startup says its also developing a full-stack hospitality tech platform that will “serve as the foundation for a more asset-light growth strategy going forward.” 

Read more:

• Bob W website
  
• Tech EU
  

Today our DEAL TALKS meets Rait Ojasaar, the investment partner from our member firm Change Ventures, to talk about their latest investment into Planet42 – a platform that combines fintech and mobility services in the South African market. Planet42 partners with dealerships across South Africa to offer car access to largely underbanked clientele. 

What makes Planet42 unique?

Planet42 is a mobility fintech that is serving the market that banks and other incumbents refuse to deal with. In their first market South Africa, this is done via a rent-to-buy model, where Planet42 buys a second-hand car from a dealership and rents it out to the end-customer. Planet42 is utilising super lean and efficient market expansion models, reaching its clients via a network of car dealerships (0 marketing cost), and using an automated scoring algorithm to process client applications. The business model is highly leverageable, as lenders can take the vehicles as security and so Planet42 relies heavily on debt funding - much more than a typical start-up would.

Identity verification start-up Veriffclosed a financing round of 15.5 M USD to ramp up global growth and sales to enterprise customers prior to a larger B-series financing round planned in the future.

Investors include Superangel, Y Combinator and Mosaic Ventures from the earlier A-series investment round, but also new investors, like NordicNinja VC and Change Ventures.

Despite the global crisis caused by COVID-19, the company has witnessed increased customer engagement and taken advantage of accelerated digitalization around the world. Last year, our verification volumes grew by 35 times, and we’ve kept up with the growth trajectory this year. However, we are also targeting profitability.  

Veriff has increased its sales volumes, continuously improving its technology, and signed agreements with major global customers in Silicon Valley. As a result of these activities, the company has earned the trust of investors and is expecting solid results for the year 2020.

According to Rainer Sternfeld, Managing Partner of NordicNinja VC, a Japanese-Nordic venture fund and a new investor in Veriff, said the identity verification company has shown sound performance. “Veriff has been able to significantly grow their business, successfully enter the market in the UK as well as in the U.S., and signed agreements with some Silicon Valley’s biggest players. We at NordicNinja are excited to see what the future has in store for Veriff, especially as it’s an essential service with a potential to reach every person on the planet.”

The global pandemic has brought along significant paradigm shifts. This has created an increased demand for online identity verification, and Veriff is taking this responsibility seriously. During the pandemic, we were in close contact with our international customers, and witnessed how global tech giants as well as more traditional businesses pivoted their strategies in response to the crisis.

Current investment brings Veriff’s total financing to 23,8 million USD and enables the company to accelerate its global growth even further.

• Read more HERE
  

Clean Water Hackathon organised by BaltCap and innovation consultancy Katalista Ventures, and backed by Nefco, mobilised seven pan-Baltic expert teams to find actionable solutions for improving the quality of the Baltic waters. The winners of the hackathon are two startups - EkoDrena from Lithuania and PurOceans from Latvia.

During the hack, EkoDrena provided a solution for mitigating the negative environmental effects of farming. Farming has become the main polluter of the surface waters of the Baltic Sea region due to washed out fertilizers that greatly increases eutrophication processes. EkoDrena proposed an adjustable underground drainage system regulating the water retention in the soil and keeping the critical value in the fields with the help of drainage. The system also enables to slow down the eutrophication processes in the surface of the water. The adjustable system developed by EkoDrena allows farmers to regulate the humidity of the soil and thereby align it to weather conditions.

The second winner, PurOceans, developed a unique technology to clean up the waterbody’s floor sediments, micro-plastic, chemicals, and other pollution elements. PurOcean provided a non-intrusive, chemical, and excavation free solution allowing to clean waterbody’s floor without causing damage to flora and fauna.  Their portable technology pumps high-pressure air bubbles into the waterbody’s floor, forcing pollutant particles to rise to the surface where they are safely collected and removed. With the novel technology, 98% of pollutants can be removed and enhanced from the seabed while preserving the existing ecosystem at the most cost and time-effective way.

Clean Water Hackathon was organised to draw attention to the water quality issues in the Baltics and find actionable and financially valid solutions for mitigating the problem. The participant teams were preselected teams solving environmental challenges on a daily basis. The hackathon provided the teams a different setting in terms of time span and tools for working – the teams were mentored by numerous experts from marketing, law, environmental protection, business, information technology, and other fields.

Clean Water Hackathon lasted for a record-long 12 days, including 85 team meetings with mentors and partners. The event attracted a great number of international organisations from all three Baltic countries, Spain, Sweden, Denmark, and the UK. Organisations included such key market players in the water ecosystem like the Ministries of the Environment in Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia; Environmental Investments Centre in Estonia; Race for the Baltic Accelerator; KPMG; Cobalt law firm; Black Unicorn PR and many others.

Other participants:

• Funguys (LV) - developing and optimizing the biological treatment bio fungi span for treating the wastewater from pharmaceutical substances.
  
• Litmus (LT) - developing an app for engaging citizens in improving water monitoring and raising awareness of water quality.
  
• AzureBlue (EE+LT) - creating a platform that will help to get transparent, available information on water pollution using satellite data.
  
• Time to change (LV) - developing a framework for various beneficiaries to apply a decision-making tree to make more eco-friendly events and mitigate the negative impact.
  
• Biovala (LT) - creating artificial floating islands helping to decrease the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in our waters.
  

Here is another interesting read in our DEAL TALKS  series. Three of our members – Superangel, Kaamos and United Angels VC – recently made an investment to Bob W, a tech-enabled hospitality start-up that brings touchless, hotel-like quality standards to the world of short-stay.

1. Why did you choose to invest, what makes Bob W unique?  

• RIIVO I United Angels VC: Early-stage investing is always about the team. We found Niko and Sebastian to be a well-balanced team between vision, foresight, analytics and execution. Being frequent travellers ourselves we also related well to the product. Once you have stayed in all types of hotels and experimented with apartment options one starts to look for something like Bob W. Bob W is a tech-enabled hospitality concept that combines the quality of the boutique hotels with the charm of the authentic homes. Bob W's concept is contactless and practically touchless - a definite competitive edge over standard hotel concepts in the era of the new normal.  

• MARKO I Superangel: Superangel decided to invest because of the driven, experienced, and ambitious founding team. Niko and Sebastian are a good combination because of their previous background in real estate, technology, and entrepreneurship. As an investor, we are mainly looking for excellent founding teams and we think Bob W has one. We also liked the authentic and personal approach for the service which is fully automated in the background. As a customer, you feel welcome and receive an excellent service. On the business side, the operations are automated and lean. 
• MAREK I Kaamos: BoBW (as in Best of Both Worlds) combines the service quality and convenience of a good hotel with the liveability and authenticity of a home. The service is an evolution from a classical hotel experience to cater the contemporary traveller in a tech-enabled package in handpicked neighbourhoods with character. For us, BobW represents an impressive mix of a talented and ambitious team and a business model we see as promising. As an added bonus there could be an additional potential for us in the future in synergies with one of our core businesses - real estate.
  

2. How is the investment used? 

• MARKO I Superangel: Bob W plans to expand its portfolio to 1000 units across Nordics, Baltics, and the UK. In order to do that they are hiring top talent all over Europe and building out autonomous hospitality tech platform. 

• MAREK I Kaamos: The company will use the proceeds to accelerate both its available units as well as invest into the development of its technology. BoB W is currently only located in Estonia and Finland, but with this round they want to expand within Europe in markets and cities the team has identified with the most potential.  The mid-term view is to expand to at least two more countries as well as further develop it´s concept to amplify growth. 
• RIIVO I United Angels VC: In addition to offering reinvented travel experience, Bob W is on the mission to create a full-stack hospitality tech platform which will serve as the foundation for more asset-light growth strategy of the company. Recent round enables the company to expand its pipeline beyond 1000 units across the Baltic Sea region and UK.
  

3. Impact and diversity
How do you assess the impact of their business and how diverse is the team?

• MAREK I Kaamos: We see the potential of the business to have an impact globally through the introduction of their unique approach, tech & ambitious plans to further develop their business model. We found the team is well-positioned to execute their plans with sufficient experience in successful VC exits as well as corporate management. 

• RIIVO I United Angels VC: Bob W is incorporated in Ireland, is originating from Finland, but has its HQ and largest operations in Tallinn. The company represents a crucial trend for Estonian economy - foreign founders incorporating a company here and attracting local and international talent. Bob W is diverse at its core with around 10 nationalities represented in the team. 
• MARKO I Superangel: Bob W has a strong focus on sustainability. You can see this throughout the suites. Starting from the local quality materials and furniture to reusable plastic containers and eco-friendly lotions.
  

 - Read more on the investment HERE

 - Visit Bob W WEBSITE 

For the first time, a report covering 10 years of Baltic PE/VC market has been compiled and launched. The report, prepared by Deloitte in cooperation with Baltic PE/VC associations, provides detailed results and analysis of the Private Equity and Venture Capital funds that operate in the Baltics, their capital raised, investments and divestments. 

• Read/download the Baltic PE/VC Market overview 2010-2019 HERE
  
• The recording (1 hour) of Deloitte's webinar on the report can be found HERE
  

Further info about the report: please contact Deloitte research team 

Again some great news from our members. Livonia Partners has sold a majority stake in Thermory to UG Investeeringud. Our DEAL TALKS series reflects on the transaction with Livonia’s partner Kaido Veske.

1.    What makes Thermory unique?

Thermory’s journey was one with multiple twists and turns. Actually, we initially invested in Ha Serv in February 2016 when it was a single-entrepreneur company in the wood processing sector, an industry with long traditions and multiple successes in the Baltics. Our original conviction was to invest in market leadership, strong cash flow and management talent. These guiding principles never changed. In the end, we helped transform a €20 million revenue company to a €100+ million revenue company in a little more than 4 years. We started with less than 200 employees and today welcome to work worldwide almost 650 people. We feel like Thermory today is a company that customers, employees, suppliers, investors, and the like are proud to have built.

2.    How do you assess the impact of the investment?

Early in our investment, we identified the transformational growth trend underlying the thermowood industry – how much better it is to the environment compared to plastic alternatives and in relation to the deforestation of rainforests. We wanted to enter the industry decisively and thus identified and acquired Suomen Lämpöpuu in Finland. This acquisition further opened our eyes towards painted wooden products and its potential, a conviction that later led us to acquire Siparila in Finland. The most significant of the deals was merging Ha Serv and Thermory, thereby creating the absolute worldwide leader in the thermowood industry. Global warming is real. Corporate environmental responsibility is a goal as much as it is a strategy. At Livonia we have always understood those connections. 

3.    What are the most important angles you assess in your investments?

Cash flow and talent. There is a large value gap these days in private equity on how much cash flow is appreciated versus growth. At Livonia, we always leaned towards defending the former. With Ha Serv and later with Thermory, it allowed us to invest in production capacity, new business lines, complete strategic add-on acquisitions, hire new talented people, etc. We are grateful to SEB bank for believing in the company as much as we did. We started with one single facility in Tartu and ended with 8 facilities, 2 warehouses and 2 sawmills across the globe. All due to the strong cash flow of Thermory.

I had the pleasure to work with and learn from some of the most talented people in the industry; Meelis Kajandu, Jaana Kurelauk, the list is long. There were two very important leadership biases in these people: bias for action versus constant reflection, and bias for tomorrow versus yesterday. With the key people, we always felt comfortable where we needed to go. We made mistakes, we were slow, sometimes misaligned. Yet in the end, we could support and count on the hard work, intuition and leadership of the people we trusted. 

Livonia going forward

There is an unwritten rule in private equity that the fund's first, last and largest investment do not work out. Thermory was our first and largest investment and if the rest of our portfolio produces the same results, we will be by far the best investor in the region and one of the best in Europe. My partner Mindaugas Utkevičius and I had a race for who would build the first €10 million EBITDA company. I won the first round, he and my other partners will certainly win others. Buying and building companies is a passion of ours at Livonia. We thank our investors for trusting us in our work. We have more than enough capital left in our existing fund and are actively progressing with our next.

Further information:

Kaido Veske
Livonia Partners
+372-52-02-088
kaido.veske@livoniapartners.com

• UG Investeeringud and Livonia Partners received regulatory approval to proceed with the sale of Thermory and completed the transaction on July 9^th. 
  

Livonia Partners is the only pan-Baltic dedicated private equity investment fund, currently managing €83 million as part of the Livonia Partners Fund I and the Livonia Partners EIF Co-Investment Fund. Run by founders Kaido Veske, Kristīne Bērziņa, Rain Lõhmus, and Mindaugas Utkevičius, its investors are domestic and international financial institutions.

Livonia Partners sells the majority ownership in Thermory AS, a global leader in thermowood production, to Estonian holding company UG Investeeringud. UG Investeeringud had previously been a minority shareholder of the company.

Founded in 1997, Thermory’s annual turnover now exceeds EUR 100 million. The company has production units in three countries, employs 700 people and exports to over 50 countries.

“We are forever grateful to Thermory’s founder Meelis Kajandu, management and everyone who contributed to building the success that is Thermory. It was the first investment for Livonia and exactly the type we promise our investors in terms of ambition and outcome. We are confident Kristjan Rahu is the best supporter for Thermory to reach its global potential,” Kaido Veske, one of the founders of Livonia Partners said.

Kristjan Rahu, CEO of UG Investeeringud said: “We are delighted to join forces with Thermory, which is a global success story born in Estonia. We keep in high regard its ambition and capabilities when it is adding in a sustainable way value to wood, an important renewable building material.”

“Thermory is very grateful to Livonia Partners, with whom it has had exciting years of growth. After rapid growth through mergers and acquisitions and expansion in export markets, Thermory plans to move forward and focus on the company’s organic growth. The plan is to increase production capacities in Estonia and Finland, develop sawmills and international sales offices, and focus on reducing the carbon footprint. UG Investments is a long-term stable investor that can raise new capital if necessary,” Meelis Kajandu, founder of Thermory said.

—

UG Investeeringud is an Estonian holding company that invests in sustainable and export-oriented companies in sectors like industry, infrastructure, utilities and more.

Livonia Partners is the only pan-Baltic dedicated private equity investment fund, currently managing €83 million as part of the Livonia Partners Fund I and the Livonia Partners EIF Co-Investment Fund. Run by founders Kaido Veske, Kristīne Bērziņa, Rain Lõhmus, and Mindaugas Utkevičius, its investors are domestic and international financial institutions. Livonia was partly originated through the Baltic Innovation Fund (BIF), a common initiative of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the European Investment Fund.

• Read also our DEAL TALKS on the investment with Livonia's founding partner Kaido Veske HERE 
  

Lithuanian urban logistics platform Ziticity raises €2.2 million to revolutionise last-mile delivery.

Lithuanian last-mile delivery service Ziticity has closed a €2.2 million seed equity investment round. The round was led by NordicNinja VC (FIN) in participation with Superhero Capital VC (FIN), Practica Capital (LT), Superangel VC (EE), Startup Wise Guys (EE) and business angel Maksim Golivkin (USA) to fund Ziticity’s expansion in Europe. 

Founded in 2017, Ziticity empowers local business owners to compete with Amazon dominance by providing the platform for affordable same-day deliveries. With an on-demand solution, local e-shops and restaurants can optimize and distribute deliveries in real-time without usual distribution centres and paying high commission fees to shipping companies or food delivery platforms. 

According to Ziticity’s data, 60% of last-mile deliveries are within a five-kilometre radius from pickup to the drop-off location. Short delivery distances widen the possibility for couriers to use any means of transportation including cars, bicycles, e-scooters, etc. 

Since launch, Ziticity has been a success in France and the Baltics, used by over 220 companies like Telia, Tele2, Pizza Hut, and Euroapotecha pharmacies’ network. Thanks to urban batching logic, the reached average delivery time is 42 minutes and couriers are able to complete 4-6 deliveries per hour. This keeps prices affordable to the shopper, while couriers are able to earn +15% more per hour than in competing platforms. 

The company has been steadily growing 22% month over month ever since the launch with a sharp 44% revenue increase during COVID-19. 

“Local e-commerce cannot compete on product price with Amazon and Alibaba. To have a fighting chance with global tech giants that are building monopolies in e-commerce and restaurant delivery space, we have been able to build a direct service for local merchants to compete locally.” – says Laimonas Noreika, the founder and CEO of ZITICITY who built the company out of personal frustration. 

“The delivery industry is expected to increase dramatically and 2.1 billion people are expected to buy goods online by 2021. On top of that, the current global pandemic changes people’s behavior and habits like how they buy, sell and eat at an unprecedented rate of change. We believe that ZITICITY’s solution is a kind of silver lining approach for the industry and end-users which need to adjust for new normal.” – says Tomosaku Sohara, Managing Partner at NordicNinja VC. 

After successful piloting, Ziticity is preparing for entering several countries in Europe. 

Further info:

Marko Oolo
Investment Manager
Superangel
marko.oolo@superangel.io 

• Read more HERE
  

Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) software startup Lucinity, which uses “Human AI to ‘make money good’, by augmenting financial crime fighters in financial firms with AI technology” just announced a $6.1m funding round, co-led by Karma Ventures and byFounders. Previous investors Crowberry Capital and Preceptor Capital also participated. 

The funding round can be described as unusual, in the sense that founder Guðmundur Kristjánsson (goes by GK) and the Lucinity team had little or no face time with their investors. 

“The huge problem Lucinity tackles, the team’s excellent background in financial services and AML solutions industry and the revolutionary approach that the team brings to the market are all components that make us firm believers that there is a great success story in the making,” commented Margus Uudam founding partner at Karma Ventures, who led the deal for the investment firm. “It’s an honor to support Lucinity’s on their journey to make money good.” 

GK, who before founding Lucinity was a senior Citigroup compliance technology expert, comments in a statement: “Partners like byFounders and Karma Ventures are invaluable. Their willingness to break their comfort zone to invest in such extraordinary circumstances is a testament to their belief in what we are building. We can not wait to work closely with them moving forward.” 

On the topic of funding a company they’ve never met, Eric Lagier, founding partner at byFounders comments: “Lucinity got the first term sheet we’ve ever written without having met the founders in the flesh. The pandemic clearly shook the venture world in the way we operate on a day-to-day basis, however brilliant founders with excellent references will always prevail.” 

Lucinity will use the funds to partner with more financial firms, something they have already done to great success, according to the statement. The company’s technology has already been deployed at banks ranging from digital-only microbanks to Tier 1 banks in the US. 

Further info:

Margus Uudam
Founding Partner
Karma VC
margus@karma.vc

Estonian fintech Montonio raises €500K in its pre-seed investment round with our member Superangel acting as one of the investors. 

The investors in the round include Charlie Songhurst (Katana Capital, ex-Google), Superangel (Estonia), Triin Hertmann and Martin Sokk (former COO and first head of product at TransferWise respectively), Gorilla Capital (Finland), Practica Capital (Lithuania) and Jevgeni Kabanov (CPO at Bolt). 

Founded in 2018, Montonio a point of sales financing solution that allows online shoppers to receive several installment offers from competing creditors with a single credit application, from which the most suitable one can be chosen. 

According to Montonio, the customer has very limited options when it comes to point of sales financing and is in most cases tied to the one creditor who has a partnership with the said merchant. Montonio acts as a credit marketplace, where the customer’s credit application is submitted to their partner creditors. Thus, the credit is provided at a much more competitive rate compared to the competitors. Unlike other hire purchase providers, such as Klarna, Montonio does not provide the credit themselves. 

The company utilizes the varying credit models of their partners to maximise the number of positive credit decisions for the whole portfolio. The CEO of the company, Markus Lember comments, that “the maximum number of customers will receive a positive credit decision increase by partnering with numerous creditors whose target customer segment ranges from super-prime to subprime. That increases the sales closing rate for the merchant using the solution. Our current rate of positive decisions is around 85%, which is significantly higher than the market average of 50-60%.” 

The company has entered into successful partnerships with the local branches of TF Bank, Svea Ekonomi and IPF Digital. “The product has been well-received, many bigger banks and merchants are showing an active interest in the collaboration,” says Lember. “Our goal is to validate the product in our current markets, create long-standing partnerships with local household names and then take on the bigger Scandinavian and Central European markets,” he adds. 

Montonio is one of the fifteen companies participating in the Mastercard Lighthouse programme this year. The programme is intended to provide the participants with direct connections to the biggest players on the market, including SEB, Swedbank and Mastercard itself. 

The investor lineup includes Charlies Songhurst (Katana Capital), Triin Hertmann and Martin Sokk (ex-TransferWise), Jevgeni Kabanov (CPO of Bolt), Gorilla Capital (Finland), Practica Capital (Lithuania), Lemonade Stand (Estonia), Superangel (Estonia), Startupwiseguys (Baltics), as well as various Estonian and Lithuanian angel investors. 

Further info:

Veljo Otsason
Managing Partner
Superangel
veljo.otsason@superangel.io

Transformative, a healthcare startup whose software predicts sudden cardiac arrest, announced today that it has raised a $1.7 million seed round, led by Tera Ventures.

Transformative, a healthcare startup whose software predicts sudden cardiac arrest, has raised a $1.7 million seed round, led by Tera Ventures. The round includes funding from the Wellcome Trust, which provided Transformative a Healthcare Innovator Award, and from InHealth Ventures, which had previously invested in Transformative’s pre-seed round. Investors Andrus Oks of Tera Ventures and Nick Slater of AI Seed are joining Transformative’s board.  

Transformative’s first patented technology predicts sudden cardiac arrest by analyzing data from patient monitoring devices that are standard in hospitals. Transformative will use its seed funding to obtain FDA clearance for its first product and to begin developing technologies that predict other life-threatening conditions, according to Josh Oppenheimer, MD, MBA, the company’s co-founder and CEO and a practicing emergency medicine physician.  

“On each shift, I experience the tragedy of delayed care and the marvel of early, preventive interventions,” Oppenheimer said. “AI-augmented patient monitoring detects subtle changes preceding patient deterioration that are invisible to physicians, allowing us to be in the right place at the right time and save more lives.” 

292,000 adults and 7,000 children suffer cardiac arrest in US hospitals each year, with only 25% surviving to hospital discharge, according to a 2019 estimate by the American Heart Association. Globally, 6 million people die from sudden cardiac arrest annually. The American Heart Association recommends early intervention – which Transformative’s technology enables – as the centerpiece of its guidelines on improving cardiac arrest care. 

Jack Lewin, MD, the Chairman of the National Coalition on Health Care, the former CEO of the American College of Cardiology, and an advisor to Transformative, noted that many patients who survive in-hospital cardiac arrest suffer serious cognitive deficits due to delayed care. “While this is disheartening, there is new hope. Transformative has developed amazing and disruptive technology capable of predicting sudden cardiac arrest minutes to hours in advance, and with 94% accuracy. Transformative will soon help physicians and hospitals save many thousands of lives each year,” Lewin said.  

Transformative’s other co-founders are Marek Sirendi, PhD, a physicist named to MIT’s Innovators Under 35 list, and Marek Rei, PhD, a machine learning researcher at Imperial College London. The company formed in 2016 through Entrepreneur First’s startup program and participated in the Philips HealthWorks program. 

Andrus Oks, Tera Ventures’ founding partner, said that “investing in future technologies is essential so that the younger generation of researchers and innovators can develop solutions that will affect the future of all humankind.” 

About Transformative:

Transformative is a medical software company operating in the US, the UK, and Estonia. Its predictive patient monitoring software identifies patients at imminent risk of life-threatening medical events, enabling preventive care. Its first patented technology predicts in-hospital sudden cardiac arrest. For more information, go to www.transformative.ai 

About Tera Ventures:

Tera Ventures is a venture capital firm based in Tallinn, Estonia and focused on exceptional founders from Estonia, Scandinavia and CEE disrupting digital space globally. Tera builds presence and networks in the markets where our portfolio companies want to expand to – the UK, the US, and Asia. With presence in Estonia, Finland, and California, Tera Ventures is supported by a global advisory network and provides portfolio companies with access to expertise and hands-on support necessary to grow from seed stage to successful exit. For more information, go to www.tera.vc

Further info:

Andrus Oks
Founding Partner
Tera Ventures
andrus@tera.vc

The Berlin-based startup behind Tandem, an app for practicing a second language, has closed a $5.7 million Series A round of financing to capitalize on growth opportunities it’s seeing as the coronavirus crisis continues to accelerate the switch to digital and online learning.

The Berlin-based startup behind Tandem, an app for practicing a second language, has closed a $5.7 million Series A round of financing to capitalize on growth opportunities it’s seeing as the coronavirus crisis continues to accelerate the switch to digital and online learning. 

The Series A round was lead by Brighteye Ventures, in cooperation with Trind Ventures, Rubylight Limited and GPS Ventures. It brings the startup’s total raised to date to $8.8 million. 

Photo: Tandem team

With many higher education institutions going remote as a result of concerns over virus exposure risks of students mixing on physical campuses, there’s a growing need for technology that helps language students find people to practice with, as Tandem tells it. And while language learning apps make for a very crowded space, with giants like Duolingo and Babbel, Tandem focuses on a different niche: native speaker practice. 

As the name suggests, its app does pair matching — connecting users with others who’re trying to learn their own language for mutual practice, by (their choice of) text, phone chat or video call. The platform also incorporates a more formal learning component by providing access to tutors. But the main thrust is to help learners get better by practicing chatting to a native speaker via the app. 

Because of the pandemic push to socially distant learners, that’s a growing digital need, according to Tandem co-founder and CEO Arnd Aschentrup. He says the coronavirus crisis spurred a 200% increase in new users — highlighting a “clear appetite” among consumers for digital language learning. 

The team has taken another tranche of funding now so it can scale to meeting this growing global opportunity. 

“Given the accelerated user-uptake and clear market opportunity, we felt that 2020 was the right time to partner with the team at Brighteye to bring Tandem into the mainstream,” says Aschentrup, adding: “We anticipate significant growth opportunities for online learning and social learning in the wake of coronavirus.”He says two “key trends” have emerged over the past few months: “Firstly, schools and universities providing language courses have either temporarily shut down, or moved almost entirely to remote lessons. Students are therefore relying on additional platforms to learn and practice languages, which is precisely what Tandem offers. 

“Secondly, we know that lockdown has enormously limited people’s ability to socialise. Friendships have been harder to maintain, and new connections more difficult to spark. We’re excited about Tandem’s ability to connect people all across the globe despite lockdown. Since coronavirus began, engagement on Tandem’s video chat feature has increased three-fold, and new user signups have increased 200%.”

Tandem had been growing usage prior to COVID-19 — increasing membership to more than 10 million members now, spread across 180 countries. 

Commenting in a statement, Alex Spiro, managing partner at Brighteye Ventures, lauded the team’s “innovative and effective strategy” in building a community platform that tackles the language gap by connecting learners with fluent speakers. “The product has not only proven resilient in this global crisis but has seen impressive growth during the period, and the team is now very well equipped to come out of it stronger and to continue to support loyal language learners that now number in the millions and will number many more in the coming years,” he added. 

Further info:
Joel Aasmäe
Managing Partner
Trind Ventures
joel@trind.vc

• Read more HERE
  

RangeForce Raises $16 Million to Help Enterprises Build Highly Skilled Cybersecurity Teams

RangeForce, the premier provider of on-demand, realistic cloud-based cybersecurity training, announced a $16 million Series A round led by Energy Impact Partners.  Paladin Capital Group continues its longstanding support of RangeForce as part of this round. The Series A also includes existing firm Trind Ventures as well as a new investment from Cisco Investments. 

With Global Headquarters in Virginia and roots in building the cyber range for NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, RangeForce solves an important problem for global enterprises — how to put a remotely accessible training program in place that can assess, train, and continually upskill cyber professionals. The RangeForce cloud platform enables teams to learn by defending against real attacks in a hands-on, engaging, and competitive environment, a scalable and cost-effective alternative to traditional cyber ranges. With the RangeForce CyberSkills platform, enterprise defenders can continuously practice how to handle cyberattacks, ensuring that all team members see what a malicious attack vector looks like in a benign environment before experiencing it for the first time. 

“We’re thrilled to partner with RangeForce at a time when critical infrastructure is under attack and organizations seek to replace classroom education with cloud-based practical training,” said Nazo Moosa, Managing Partner Europe at Energy Impact Partners. “Worldwide, we see organizations continue to struggle with the shortage of cybersecurity professionals. While investing heavily in cybersecurity tools, they severely underinvest in the training their people need to manage the security stack and harness their skills to detect and stop a cyberattack.” 

RangeForce has experienced rapid growth since its launch, with a 2,700 percent year-over-year increase in annual recurring revenues. The company plans to build on its momentum from its headquarters in the Washington, D.C. area. More than 100 organizations are already experiencing the benefits of the RangeForce platform, including some of the world’s largest organizations across financial services, technology, government, retail, telecom, and healthcare. RangeForce’s CyberSkills Platform provides customers with prescriptive, individualized learning paths with hundreds of real-world training modules so that security, DevOps, web application engineers, and industrial control teams can quickly upskill and cross-train team members, provide custom reports to management, and orchestrate incident detection and response across multiple vendor tools. RangeForce has also developed vendor-specific training modules to include Recorded Future, Splunk, VirusTotal, and Carbon Black. These integrations continue to expand as the company creates a full-stack security partner ecosystem. 

RangeForce CEO Taavi Must explains, “This round of funding validates our mission to bring highly effective operational cybersecurity training to organizations of all sizes. One of the toughest challenges facing enterprise defenders is that they’ve been expected to use highly complex security tools while their organizations are under attack, without ever learning and practicing how to use them effectively together. With hands-on, simulation-based cybersecurity training, we strengthen enterprise defenders and their teams and make the security solutions they select even more effective.” 

RangeForce will use the funding to accelerate its go to market efforts, advance product development, expand its ecosystem of training orchestration partners, and focus on global growth. 

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Further info:

Taavi Lepmets
Partner
Trind Ventures
taavi@trind.vc

Today our DEAL TALKS reflects a chat with Taavi Lepmets, Partner at Trind Ventures, who talks about their recent investment into Tandem. The Berlin-based startup behind Tandem, an app for practicing a second language, has closed a $5.7 million Series A round of financing to capitalize on growth opportunities it’s seeing as the coronavirus crisis continues to accelerate the switch to digital and online learning.

• Read more on the news HERE
  

This time our DEAL TALKS meets Andrus Oks, the Founding Partner of Tera Ventures and we talk about their recent investment into Transformative AI– a healthcare startup whose software predicts sudden cardiac arrest.

Here’s what Andrus said: 

1. What makes Transformative unique?
Transformative’s world-class team is amazing. Their patented algorithm predicts sudden cardiac arrest with 94 percent accuracy. Predictions occur at least 2 minutes in advance, with some warnings as early as one hour in advance. These results exceed all published results. With ECG data from thousands of patients, they have the largest and most diverse database of its kind. Thanks to research agreements with leading hospitals in North America, Europe, and Asia, they are acquiring more data continuously to improve on this performance. 

2. How is the investment used?
Transformative will use its seed funding to obtain FDA clearance for its technology and support the technology’s commercial launch. 

3. Impact and diversity
Transformative is operating in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Estonia.  Their technology will revolutionize in-hospital cardiac telemetry monitoring - this represents not only a massive business opportunity but also an opportunity to save thousands of lives each year. 

Key advisors of the deal
Ellex Raidla was the legal advisor, represented by Antti Perli. 

Further info:
Andrus Oks
Founding Partner
Tera Ventures
andrus@tera.vc

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