Here are the lastest news on investments to Latvian Startups
Roibox
Roibox - SaaS AdTech platform focused on processing location data - has attracted 2M EUR investment from BlackSheep Ventures – the first European venture capital fund which focuses on Big Data, AI and automation-focused startups. Founded in 2020 and with 10 employees in Latvia, Roibox is still a fairly new startup, but with a total of 3M EUR investment at this point it is one of the more rapidly growing local enterprises.
The main draw for advertisers in using Roibox is being able to analyse marketing data of territories split into one square kilometer regions. The service automatically makes adjustments based on missed opportunities, budget waste, useless bids, and similar factors. Roibox cites as much as up to 30% increase in advertising efficiency with their geotargeting.
One of the main goals of attracting investment for Roibox is to focus on developing their current product and adding more ad channels. Thus far Roibox has only been compatible with Google and Meta advertisements – which, while dominating the online ad space, is still a significant limitation. The most important addition would be Amazon.
Another planned improvement would be increased ad campaign efficiency through more accurate user targeting and filters. Not only does it improve the service for the client, but also increases how relevant ads are for users – improving their browsing experience and reducing the effect of being bombarded by irrelevant ads and becoming apathetic to them.
Folded
Folded – eCommerce cardboard packaging startup - has attracted 1.7M EUR investment to keep up with rising demand for board games and high quality packaging.
Most of the investment – 1M EUR – comes from the Latvian venture capital fund manager Expansion Capital, specifically from one of their most recent funds – INEC1. Rest of the invest are a variety of private investors, alongside which the project has been supported by SEB bank – with a 300 thousand EUR loan. Founded in 2020, this is the first big investment for Folded, as until now their operations were supported by successful initial business partnerships (enough to grow to 14 employees) and – since 2021 – support from Investment and Development Agency of Latvia Jūrmala Business Incubator.
These funds have already been put to use – Folded is planning to open a new 2700 square meter factory over the span of fall 2022, and much of the equipment was already ordered as the investment round was taking place. New production capacity will allow Folded to not only address the rising demand for their high-quality cardboard boxes, but also accelerate partnetships with tabletop game developers around Europe and North America, as well as locally – like SIA “Brain Games”.
FlexIdea
FlexIdea - a FinTech startup that helps streamline invoice processes for small and medium businesses (as banks usually offer factoring only to large enterprises) – has been partially acquired by private equity fund Helenos, which now has a 14.67% stake in the FlexIdea capital. While exact numbers have not been released, Helenos estimated the value of the startup to be around 5M EUR, which would put the investment around 733.5 thousand EUR.
FlexIdea is an up-to-date invoice financing solution (alternative to factoring) – with their online platform allowing businesses to forget about unsettled accounts – receiving payment within 24 hours. They have more than 600 clients and have financed more than 7.5 thousand invoices with a total of around 57M EUR.
With 4 employees in Latvia and already established operations in Poland, FlexIdea aims to spread further into EU markets, develop their solution to better support their client international dealings, and improve their remote support.
For some further funding, FlexIdea also ran a promotional campaign over September together with their partner Debitum (Latvian business loan platform) – 2% cashback bonus applied for all new investments in FlexIdea assets, calculated per annum for the investment period.
