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Clikalia raised €450m. Playomic’s M&A strategy. Cocunat’s path to €100m.

October 18, 2021 • Issue #289

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Olea Neutral es un fondo de inversión que busca una rentabilidad media anual del 5% con una restricción: que sus partícipes preserven sus ahorros en 3 años. ¿Te gustan los fondos en los que los gestores se comprometen a invertir todo su patrimonio contigo? En Olea Neutral, los gestores son los dueños de la gestora, pagan las mismas comisiones y obtienen la misma rentabilidad que tú.

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Startup funding news 💸

  • At least when it comes to fundraising events, Valencia continues to solidify its position as the third main tech hub in Spain
  • Madrid-based proptech Clikalia raised €450m (€50m in equity and €400m in debt) from Banco Santander and Fifth Wall. Clikalia claims to be the "leading" instant property buyer in Spain
  • Barcelona-based energy company HolaLuz raised €11.4m
  • Barcelona-based telemedicina startup Top Doctors raised €11m
  • Madrid-based energy startup RatedPower raised €5m, led by Seaya Ventures. RatedPower offers pvDesign, a cloud-based software to carry out the design and engineering of utility-scale solar photovoltaic plants
  • Madrid-based recruitment startup Shakers raised €800k
  • Other rounds of funding: Capri Bikes, Shellock

M&A activity 🎊

  • Indra acquired a majority stake in The Overview Effect, a company specialising in driving innovation to increase companies’ sustainability

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

  • Aldea Ventures invested in Germany's Lunar Ventures new €40m fund
  • El Referente launched a new edition of its Startup Investment Guide
  • The family office of Josep Font Fabregó, former owner of 50% of Bon Preu, has entered the VC business with Turtle Capital

Startup news 💡

  • This is an interesting profile of Playtomic and its M&A strategy to increase market share and grow its business. Playtomic has built a SaaS-enabled marketplace for sports aficionados, mostly focused on the sport of paddle tennis. The company has made 10 acquisitions in just the past 18 months, and says that it has the goal of reaching €100m in global sales. According to the article, more than 900k monthly bookings are completed through its platform
  • La Informacion talked to David Bonilla of Manfred about the current health of the tech labour market: the impact that covid has had in the supply and demand of tech jobs, how the preferences of workers have changed and how remote/hybrid environments might affect the industry going forward
  • La Informacion profiled Twinco, a platform that offers a supply chain finance solution between suppliers and purchasers via purchase order funding. Twinco claims to have reached more than €30m in purchase order financings
  • Iuvia is a Galician startup building a privacy-friendly cloud hosting solution for consumers. The company is about to launch its first campaign on Kickstarter and in preparation shared some details on what they're up to here
  • Heura, the Barcelona-based startup developing plant-based food, announced that it's expanding to Mexico and has also signed a partnership with DIA to sell its products in its supermarkets
  • La Informacion published a profile of Sara Werner, co-founder of cosmetics DTC startup Cocunat. The company has seen impressive growth in the past few years. It did €4m in sales in 2019 and grew that number by 8X in 2020, to €32m in sales with only 30 employees
  • Business Insider talked to Albert Nieto and Jorge Poyatos, co-founders of Seedtag, about the company's recent €34m Series B and how they have positioned themselves as a key player in a cookie-less future
  • Last week I saw several articles about the fact that Glovo now has a development hub in Madrid. I'm pretty sure that they announced the opening of a software development office in Madrid months (or years) ago, so I'm not sure if the announcement was related to an actual new office or what exactly. Having said that, it was interesting to find out that Glovo has grown from 40 employees in Madrid to more than 150 in a year, and that they expect to get to more than 200 in 2022
  • N26 signed an agreement with Ironhack to provide scholarships to students interested in participating in the latter's educational programs. The initiative has a budget of €100k
  • Rocket Internet has launched its own last mile delivery service in Spain. Riders are on payroll. Interestingly, the service will be first available in cities other than Madrid and Barcelona, starting with A Coruña, Granada, Pamplona and Valencia
  • Startups' Oasis put together a list of eight Spanish startups in the music business
  • The same publication also interviewed Spaniard Miguel Carranza, co-founder of RevenueCat, to talk about the company and his view on the Spanish ecosystem
  • Trade Republic, a German stock broker with a similar strategy to Robin Hood in the US, has launched in Spain. Another fintech German startup, Solarisbank, also announced that it's launching its banking-as-a-service in Spain
  • Startup profiles:
  • Deale: marketplace to buy and sell SMBs
  • Flipeat: foodtech restaurant booking service

Big company news 🏦

  • For several years, Telefonica said that it would not sell its fibre network business. Now it seems that it might do so, in order to finance other rollouts and initiatives
  • Ecommerce represents 22% of Ikea's total sales in Spain

Interesting reads 🤓

  • Barcelona & Partners is a new investment agency launched in June 2021 with the goal of attracting companies in life sciences, advanced manufacturing, disruptive technologies, climate change, and the future of mobility and internet. fDi published an interview with its CEO, Angel Garcia, about the organisation's plans to attract more investment to the Catalan capital
  • El Español interviewed Arsenio Otero, a Spaniard that's currently the CEO of Celonis. Celonis is a huge European process mining company, with more than $1.4b in funding
  • Samuel Gil continued with his C-level series, this time writing about the CTO role
  • Ana Asuero, CPO at Bdeo, wrote her reflections on the topic of addition by subtraction in a product development context

Podcasts 🎧

  • Minimalism interviewed Jose Luis Vega de Seoane, co-founder of foodtech startup Kilimanjaria
  • Novicap interviewed Jaime Rodriguez of Free Now and Kaizen
  • Life on Mars interviewed Sergio Gago to talk about technical audits in M&A processes
  • Itnig interviewed Oscar Pierre, CEO of Glovo
  • K Fund interviewed Enrique Ruiz, co-founder of Wuolah
  • SeedRocket interviewed Quim Sabria, co-founder of EDPuzzle
  • Product Hackers interviewed Daniel Torres Burriel, to talk about UX and growth
  • Sin Oficina interviewed Elena Madrigal, who makes €15k with Notion templates

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