CEE Scaleup Challenge organized by Vestbee (www.vestbee.com), the leading platform connecting global VC funds, corporates, accelerators and business angels with startups and scaleups from Central & Eastern Europe has just ended. RetargetApp, the Ukrainian scaleup present also in the US outcompeted more than 350 companies fighting for an opportunity to win 1 million euro from Next Road Ventures fund. Second and third places, respectively Contiamo and Sensoneo.
Backed by TA Ventures and few business angels, RetargetApp was founded in 2013 in Kyiv and has been rapidly growing since then. The company solves main advertisement problems: high costs, irrelevant ads, complicated and time-consuming tools and marketing processes providing seamless applications to efficiently manage advertising campaigns and sell more by running smart, data-driven ads. The solution has already proved to provide 2x better results than the industry average.
Contiamo, Berlin-based data virtualization company, funded by Capnamic Ventures revolutionizes the process of data virtualization for enterprises as a single source of data allowing users to quickly create the content without specific knowledge. Contiamo works with enterprise clients, such as Deutsche Telekom, AXA and LindeIt.
Slovakian company Sensoneo, backed among others by Credo Ventures, has developed smart waste management solution that monitors waste in real-time, with sophisticated software providing with data-driven decision making, and optimization of waste collection routes, frequencies and vehicle loads.
Apart from TOP 3 CEE Scaleups, the company that also caught the attention of Jury is Gremon Systems that revolutionizes the technology and management of global greenhouse cultivation. Gremon Systems won a special prize from InnoEnergy – fast track to Boostway program supporting SME’s in industrialization, business development, internationalization, and funding.
Among TOP 10 scaleups one could also find such companies as Billon (Polish fintech company which helps enterprises combine real-time payments, documents, identity and data management in a single platform), Vive Lab (Hungarian medtech firm helping to optimize workplaces and workflows to reduce work cycle time, increase the level of occupational safety and health), Eurosender (Slovenian digital platform, empowering companies to create their own digital logistics department and increase performance), Adquesto (Polish scaleup that has created new form of online advertising with 100% ads visibility), BEAD (German AI-based system that analyzes, optimizes and operates building’s energy management) and Inspector Cloud (Russian image recognition service for retail industry).
CEE Scaleup Challenge is a continuation of the series of online challenges organized by Vestbee that aims to fill the regional funding gap by building bridges between global investors and startups from Central & Eastern Europe. Among investors and corporate partners supporting this initiative, you can find a bunch of well-known names. For example, Balderton Capital, Notion, Almaz Capital, Credo Ventures, InnoEnergy, Innogy Innovation Hub, CISION, Talanx, and Adamed. The next edition of regional startup competition will start already in September gathering European startups and global investors under one online roof.
