Techcelerator, a Romanian accelerator for tech startups, presented the second cohort taking part in their NEXT FinTech program. It takes place between the 25th of January and the 25th of March and it offers founders sales, marketing, and investment opportunities.
Supported by Google for Startups, GapMinder BV, Stripe, SeedBlink, TechAngels, RoFintech Association, and Romania Tech Startups Association, 10 Fintech startups from Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, the UK, and Armenia will go through different mentoring modules.
The participating startups are:
- From Bulgaria: Boleron, a software platform for digital insurance,
- From Romania: BankSpot, connecting clients, brokers, and banks for a better communication flow; Credify, a platform aiming to simplify online loans; Prime Dash, offering ML and AI solutions for companies and financial institutions; SOLO Fintech, an app to manage projects registered as sole traders; Vestinda, building an investment platform through human experience and automation; Zanumi, a cloud-based platform targeting accounting and financial review processes.
- From Greece: Infin8 Applications, a mobile banking app featuring different bank accounts or cards;
- From England: SPIN Analytics, offering an AI platform to improve banks’ credit risk management;
- From Armenia: Text’n Pay Me, developing a banking keyboard for money transfers in any messaging app.
Over the following 10 weeks, these Fintech startups will define their MVPs and get ready for future financing rounds with the help of over 20 international mentors. Amongst them there are Sergiu Negut – co-founder of FintechOS; Mike Parsons – CEO of Qualitance; Irina Leca – Product Marketing Manager at Google; Petr Baron – CEO at TBI Bank; Veselina Markova – Fintech Lead, Eleven Ventures; Valeri Petrov – Partner, Eleven Ventures; and Ian Scarffe – Expert at the European Commission – Horizon 2020.
“FinTech startups have become actual innovation drivers and promoters. Techcelerator thus provides a full context for the development of the local startup ecosystem”, Cristian Dascalu, partner at GapMinder VC and co-founder of Techcelerator, shares in the press release.
FinTech startups from SEE
The Recursive took a closer look at the selected startups and their FinTech solutions. Find out below.
>>> Boleron was founded in 2019 by Alexander Tsvetkov, who is also the CEO, in Sofia, Bulgaria. The team offers a digital insurance platform designed to manage insurance products via mobile phones. Last year they closed a €500k round to expand to Romania.
>>> Bankspot was launched last year by Bogdan Iliescu in Bucharest, Romania. The team wants to facilitate and digitize loan flows targeting both B2C and B2B segments. They aim to develop partnerships with all the banks in the country.
>>> Credify Asset Management was co-founded in 2019 by George Leontin Tabaran and Madalina Colceag in Bucharest, Romania. They offer a marketplace that users can access to request a loan from several financial institutions with one application. The team’s target is to keep developing the product and integrate more partners.
>>> Prime Dash is a US company with a Romanian team. It was founded by Madou Sylla, who is also the CEO, in 2017 and it offers B2B financial software. The startup has raised €450K so far.
>>> SOLO is a Bucharest-based startup co-founded in 2020 by Annemarie Fabian and Alexandru Anghel. They are offering a way for entrepreneurs to manage their company’s accounting. Their target for this year is to reach 10K users and prepare a funding round.
“We signed up for NEXT FinTech because we want to reach 10,000 customers by the end of this year. The ecosystem of mentors, other startups, and investors in the program is essential to learn and test ideas quickly and obviously to get the funding that will support our growth,” shared Annemarie Fabian, the co-founder of SOLO.
>>> Vestinda is a 2021 Bucharest-based FinTech startup founded by Alin Breaban. The Private Beta FinTech solution has been forming in the past couple of years based on market experts and community knowledge. The platform, which aims to allow anybody to develop an investment portfolio, has been tested by 1000 users and will soon be targeting a funding round.
>>> Zanumi is a startup co-founded at the beginning of 2021 by Tudor Bastea and Maria Patrascoiu in Bucharest, Romania. They offer a platform that can automate accounting and prepare statutory and management reports.
“Our main goal is to focus on the go-to-market strategy, thus, we trust that leveraging mentors’ knowledge and expertise would help us launch our product more strategically, significantly improving our chances of success,” says Maria Patrascoiu, co-founder and CEO of Zanumi.
>>> Infin8 Applications is a startup launched in 2014 in Athens, Greece, by Dimitris Petrilis, Dmytro Pimakhov, Panagiotis Kloutsiniotis, and Sampatis Orfanakos. The team has developed a mobile banking app with access to 160 banks in 6 countries – Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, France, and Romania. They plan to add more countries and banks.
