In July the deal flow in CEE was quite thin in terms of the quantity, but worth of attention in terms of quality.
Russian SmartCat spins off from ABBYY and raises $2.8M from RedSeed
SmartCat, the startup which develops a cloud platform for translation automation, has spun off from Russian software publisher ABBYY Language Solutions. At the same time, the team secured $2.8M from Russian fund RedSeed founded by Ilya Shirokov, a prominent Internet entrepreneur.
SmartCAT combines translation automation technologies with direct access to thousands of language professionals. According to SmartCat CEO Ivan Smolnikov, from the very beginning the product was supposed to be developed for the open market.
In 2015 the beta-version of the product attracted thousands of translators and about 1,000 companies from 100 countries. So the decision was to spin off SmartCAT into an independent company and develop it internationally.
In January 2016 the service took up “free-to-use” model. The platform is free for freelancers, but it sells translators some additional features and takes 10% commission fee for all payments on the platform. Details here.
Russian VisionLabs banks $5.5M from Sistema corporate fund
Russian startup VisionLabs secured $5.5M from Sistema Venture Capital, which targets internationally-oriented early-stage startups from Russia and its neighbours.
The company now is a resident of the international tech hub Skolkovo, Moscow. The startup specializes in data analysis, face recognition, and robotics. Its famous products ‘Luna’ and ‘Face_IS’ use facial recognition technology and allow businesses to identify customers and make personalized offers to them, thus making CRM more efficient.
VisionLabs also conducted R&D with Facebook and Google and recently has been listed out of 300 candidates to participate in international startup accelerator ChallengeUp! which is run by Cisco, Intel and Deutsche Telekom. More info here.
Finnish-Ukrainian startup Madberry gets $1M from SMRK and Viewster
Madberry, a SaaS platform designed for high performance data-driven programmatic advertising, has secured $1 million from Ukrainian investment fund SMRK and Swiss company Viewster, a global video-on-demand service.
Madberry created Quple, a data-driven user acquisition tool for game marketing geeks. The tool is to solve one of the biggest problems in modern game ad business - missing the target audience. Quple uses machine-learning algorithms to predict the behaviour of gamers and their reaction to adverts, and addresses those users who might be interested in the game advertisement.
The startup intends to spend the money on R&D and technology enhancements which will deliver highly targeted advertising campaigns on SmartTV. Madberry also plans to expand to the US market. See more here.
Latvian Sonarworks secures $700K in the third round
Sonarworks, a multi-award winning audio tech start-up from Latvia, banked €700K from FlyCap Investment Fund I AIF, private investor Vilis Vitols, and AIF Imprimatur Capital Technology Venture Fund. All in all, the company got €1.5M in venture capital.
Sonarworks is the world’s leader in digital sound correction. It develops the solution which eliminates sound shortcomings in headphones and speakers. Sonarworks’s Reference 3 calibration software is used worldwide by more than 5000 recording studios.
The company plans to spend the money on the new product development. This new solution will allow the listener to hear the music in the original studio-recorded quality on any device. More details here.
Cover image credit
