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Venture Capital in Europe, the latest deals

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On September - 22 - 2010
  • Investinor, Alliance Venture, founders and staff have invested NOK 16.2m in Norwegian software provider bMenu.
  • Newfund and three private investors have provided French eCRM specialist CRM Mobile Corp (TCMC) with growth capital funding.
  • Following a six-year association with the venture investor as an advisor, life sciences specialist and entrepreneur Dr Kevin Johnson has joined Index Ventures as a Partner.
  • Danish venture capital firm SEED Capital has invested DKK 7.6m in biotech company Reapplix.
  • Reapplix has developed the LeucoPatch, a treatment for foot ulcers. The treatment is designed for diabetic sufferers, who often suffer extensive foot ulcers that heal poorly. European studies have shown that more than a fifth of ulcers in diabetic patients result in amputation.

    A clinical study at the Centre for Wound Healing at Bispebjerg Hospital found that 13 out of 16 patients with chronic ulcers (including five diabetics) were completely healed after using LeucoPatch.

    “In Denmark we [spend] in total nearly DKr 3bn annually on wound care, and amputations can easily cost up to DKr 1m per patient,” said Bo Jesper Hansen, chariman of Reapplix.

  • Three former executives of Belgian investor KBC Private Equity have spun out to form new small-cap, later-stage outfit Think2Act Partners, according to local press reports.
  • Doughty Hanson has acquired UK-based Equity Trust in a €350m secondary buyout from Candover Partners and other institutional shareholders.
  • GIMV has invested €15m to back the management buyout of French e-commerce company Onedirect.
  • Prime Technology Ventures has sold its 43% stake in web analytics specialist Nedstat to comScore, in a deal that values the company at $36.7m (€28.6m).
  • A pool of institutional and angel investors has provided UK medical equipment company Microvisk with a £2.5m round of funding.
  • Balderton Capital has led a €3m series-A funding round for Irish telecommunications specialist Socowave.
  • Eden Ventures has made five new investments in UK early-stage technology companies, with amounts ranging in size from £100,000 to £1m. (TechCrunch Article).
  • Internet focused fund ISAI has backed the French online marketplace InstantLuxe.com with €650,000 of funding.
  • Advent Venture Partners and No 8 Ventures have invested £1m in software company OpenCloud, as part of a £5m funding round.
  • 21 Investimenti, the Franco-Italian mid-market later stage investor, has sold Italian oil and gas engineering firm Valbart to listed US business Flowserve.
  • Investinor and existing investors ProVenture Seed and Energy Capital Management have invested NOK 40m in Norwegian software solutions provider Verdande Technology AS.
  • 123Venture and a pool of private investors have injected €2.8m into French technology company Unowhy.
  • Ysios Capital Partners and Caixa Capital Risc have invested €5m in medical technology research company Sabirmedical.
  • The Bank of Ireland has led a €1.8m round of funding for Dublin software start-up InishTech via its Seed and Early Stage Equity Fund.
  • Chopin Invest has bought a portfolio of minority stakes from Seventure Partners, for an undisclosed amount. Companies that were affected by the deal include Netasq, Opti-Time, Quescom, Scaleo Chip and W4.
  • Intel Capital, MCI Management and Ondra Tomek have acquired Netretail Holding, a holding company and operator of the online shopping site mall.cz, from its previous investor, 3TS Capital Partners in a deal valued at €11m. As part of the transaction, Intel Capital and MCI Management invested €5m each, while Ondra Tomek, founder of Czech web portal NetCentrum, contributed €1m. The funding was used to expand business in the region of Central and Eastern Europe.
  • Forbion Capital Partners, YSIOS Capital Partners, Industrifonden and HealthCap have held a second closing of a series-A financing round, raising SEK 124m for drug developer Cardoz AB.
  • Venture capital firm Wellington Partners has agreed to sell Munich-based software company Aloqa GmbH to mobile phone giant Motorola for an undisclosed sum.
  • High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and DN Capital have teamed up to provide a first round of funding for baby care specialty website windeln.de, which is scheduled to launch this month.
  • Forbion Capital Partners closed its FCF II fund in July, having raised €136m.
  • Catapult Venture Managers has injected £600,000 in UK mobile application and platform provider Yospace Enterprises Ltd.
  • High-Tech Gründerfonds has invested in German software developer ConWeaver GmbH.
  • Viking Venture has led a consortium of investors consisting of Alliance Venture, Salvesen og Thams and Glør Iks in a NOK 16m funding round for MemfoACT.
  • ALMI Invest and Wingefors Invest have provided SEK 2m for I Read new media AB, which provides digital journals through Paperton.com.
  • 17Capital announced the final close of its first fund, 17Capital Fund, which raised €88m.
  • Nexit Ventures and existing investors, including Sofinnova Partners, have injected €17m into Finnish mobile advertising provider Blyk.
  • Two-man technology team The Bakery, which has worked on animated film blockbusters including Shrek and Madagascar, has secured a $2.3m investment for its software group.

WHEB closing its second cleantech fund

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On June - 11 - 2010

WHEB Ventures, one of Europe’s leading clean technology private equity and venture capital firms, has achieved the final closing of its second clean technology fund, WHEB Ventures Private Equity Fund 2 LP, at £105.4m (€125m-$145m).

James McNaught-Davis, WHEB’s Managing Partner, said: “We are very pleased to announce the final closing of our second cleantech private equity fund. Raising over £105 million during the deepest recession since the 1930s is an achievement. WHEB Ventures is one of very few cleantech venture capital firms to have raised significant amounts of capital since September 2008.”

WHEB Fund 2’s investors are a mix of institutions and family offices. The institutional investors include the European Investment Fund, the Environmental Innovation Fund managed by Hermes and a leading US fund of pension funds. The family offices comprise a range of leading industrial and financial families including the Bamfords (who own JCB plc), the Goldsmiths, Lord Jacob Rothschild (Chairman of RIT plc) and Simon Robertson (Chairman of Rolls Royce plc).

“The WHEB team now looks forward to focusing its efforts on investing this new cleantech fund while continuing to support our existing portfolio of investee companies, some of which should be ripe for exit during the next 12 months.” said McNaught-Davis.

WHEB’s Fund 2 has made six investments since its first closing in July 2008. These investments address markets in the energy efficiency, green industrial processes and waste management sectors.

Huddle announces $10.2m investment, US offices

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On May - 18 - 2010

Huddle, the real time collaboration startup based in the Uk, just announced a major investment and the opening of a US office.

The funding was led by Matrix Partners, an investor in Apple, HubSpot and Gilt. Existing investors Eden Ventures and Huddle’s chairman Charles McGregor also participated in the round.

The London-based company is already profitable and will quadruple in size in the next few years, said Alastair Mitchell,

Huddle’s CEO. Mitchell will move to the US and the company will use the latest funding to continue building its US customer base, which includes Disney and Procter & Gamble.

Huge congratulations to the very friendly team at Huddle for keeping the eu scene interesting to foreign investors, I am sure they will have a very successful adventure.

Read more on their blog and Techcrunch.

Recent VC deals in Europe

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On May - 5 - 2010

Flash: FreshTL raises £300k from YFM Private Equity

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On April - 12 - 2010

YFM Private Equity has invested £300,000 in UK software vendor, FreshTL.

The financing is part of a £600,000 co-investment deal with Greener House Investments, and marks YFM’s first investment from the North West Interim Venture Capital Fund.
FreshTL has created a crowd computing platform that is a combination of software from IBM and Bricsys – a Belgian software vendor.

Yoom.de raises further cash from Earlybird

Posted by Stefano Bernardi On April - 6 - 2010

Yoom.de, an innovative online platform for tenant-to-tenant residential real estate transactions, has raised further growth capital from Earlybird Venture Capital. Currently, Earlybird manages over 430 million Euros of assets for an international investor base investing in innovative, fast growing companies with outstanding management teams and high growth potential in international markets. Earlybird’s portfolio currently includes more than 25 companies in seven countries, they invested in over 70 companies and scored several successful trade sales and IPOs.

The company received seed financing from angel investors in spring 2009 while the new round is rumored to be in the single-digit million Euro amount,  following its successful market entry.

Hopefully they will use the money to put up an english version and enter other european markets.

Malte Niebuhr, Managing Director at Yoom.de, is delighted: ”Earlybird Venture Capital is a high-class investor who has already very actively supported us during our start-up phase and continues to do so in the growth phase we are now entering and very much looking forward to.

Yoom.de enables current and new tenants, landlords and asset / facility managers to efficiently execute the tenant changing process without involving real estate agents, whilst at the same time providing an economic benefit for all parties by revolutionising the value chain.

Dr. Christian Nagel, Managing Partner at Earlybird Venture Capital, comments: “Yoom.de is an innovative business model with the potential to eliminate a market inefficiency – namely high real estate agent commissions without agents providing a noticeable service or value-ad in return. The first transactions on the platform have proven that the model offers significant advantages not only to previous and subsequent tenants, but also to landlords and asset / facility managers compared to the estate agent-model. We are very convinced of the business idea.”