Devengo, a Spanish fintech that offers “Payments as a Service” is a pioneer in the provision of embedded payments across a range of vertical markets. Its technology enables businesses to build payments directly into their own platforms without needing to build complicated payment systems, become regulated themselves or manage the complexities of payment networks and schemes.

Devengo delivers payments infrastructure for some well known companies like Payflow, JobandTalent or Reveni and their thousands of customers. The team has deep understanding of embedded payment requirements in specific vertical markets undergoing digital transformation including accounting & payroll, loans, micro-loans, payables and hyper growth markets like next generation banking and fintech.

Devengo stands out as being a B2B and infrastructure provider with access to, and trust of, key regulators and payment networks/schemes, this means, we have the same level of access to payment schemes, but backed by our resilient, easy, reliable and powerful API platform.

Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid-based transportation company Cabify closed on a €40M loan from the European Investment Bank, the money will be allocated to decarbonise Cabify's Spanish vehicle fleets by introducing new electric vehicles and charging points
• Madrid-based Senniors raised €5.3M, led by US fund SixThirty. Senniors aims to modernize long-term care for elderly and dependent people
• Madrid-based energy startup Samara raised €4.5M from Seaya and Pelion Green Future
• Barcelona-based biotech Gate2Brain raised €2.5M
• Bewater Funds invested €320k in Bilbao-based Indemnizame. The post says that the company grew revenues by +68% in 2022 and is cash flow positive
• Bia, a Barcelona-based startup that has built a platform to forecast, monitor and optimize electric vehicle (EV) charging, received investment from Bridgestone Mobility Solutions and also signed a commercial partnership with the company
• Other rounds of funding: Lubets, Iberastur, Run to Wear, Almotech, DynamicsVR, TrovantTechnology

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• Axis and Fondico approved an aggregate €410M investment into several funds, including All Iron Ventures, Inveready and Portuguese fund Bynd, among others
• Patricia Pastor, head of GoHub Ventures, said that the firm will stop its acceleration programs to fully focus on its investment activity
• The European Investment Fund has provided a €101M guarantee to Banco Sabadell, aimed at unlocking up to €336M to support Spanish SMEs and mid-cap businesses in the renewables sector
• Cardumen and Basque Culinary Center to launch a €45M fund for foodtech startups
• According to a report by Eatable Adventures, Spanish foodtech startups raised €268M in 2022. If Glovo's €450M round in 2021 is excluded from the analysis, this means a 9% YoY increase. The report can be downloaded here

Startup news 💡

• Sponsored
  Madrid-based fintech startup Devengo delivers payments infrastructure for some well known companies like Payflow, JobandTalent or Reveni and their thousands of customers. If you need help optimizing your payments infra, check them out here for a potential fit
• Law firm Metricson published an overview of the Spanish Startup Law, including their own opinion on the now approved legislation: "La Ley de Startups es un paso adelante, insuficiente y defectuoso, pero un paso al fin y al cabo". On the topic, the government published "Everything you need to know about the Startups Act: the 10 key measures". The government also announced a plan to invest €100M in tech companies, through accelerators and other initiatives
• Niklas Östberg, CEO of Delivery Hero, talked in an interview with La Vanguardia about the current situation of the food delivery market and more specifically about the prospects of Glovo. He says that Glovo will lose €300M this year but could be profitable in two or three years. He also says that within the DH group, Glovo's offices in Barcelona are their second largest tech hub after Berlin, with more than 1,700 employees
• Jose Carlos Cortizo, co-founder of Product Hackers, said on Twitter than in 2022 they grew sales by 70%, to €3.1M. They also recorded a podcast to talk about what they've been up to in the past 12 months
• Business Insider interviewed Rodrigo Rodriguez, co-founder and CEO of Odilo, about the growth of the company. Odilo allows any library, school, university, corporation or municipality to offer all kinds of digital content to their users. The article doesn't offer any insight into the company's revenue or performance. To date it has raised more than €80M and it says that it has a reach of 170M users across the world
• Deale, the marketplace to help SMEs connect with investors and advisors, said that in the past few months companies on the platform have received an aggregate number of €100M in investment and/or M&A offers
• Car ecommerce and marketplace company Motoreto said that in 2022 it grew sales to €12M, up by 260% YoY
• Fintech startup Micappital is expanding to the insurance market, and will provide services to end consumers to optimize their insurance policies and contracts
• El Mundo put together a round table with people from Clikalia, BBVA Spark, South Summit, Extension Fund to talk about the current entrepreneurship and investment landscape
• Startup profiles:
• Darwinex: fintech

Big company news 🏦

• Facebook has hired the services of law firm Baker McKenzie to execute an ERE that, according to sources, could affect one third of Facebook's staff. According to LinkedIn, Meta (Facebook) has more than 900 employees in Spain

Interesting reads 🤓

• Miguel Arias, colleague of mine at K Fund, wrote "Venture Capital vs Startup vs Corporate, this is not career advice"
• El Español published a profile of Julio Alonso, co-founder of media startup WeblogsSL, sold to Webedia
• Iñaki Arriaga, co-founder of Acumbamail, wrote "Strategies to increase the profitability of a SaaS company"
• Ferran Marti and Adrien Ezerzer, of Nina Capital, published "where to START and where to GO" a post on the keys to successful internationalization
• Rosa Jiménez Cano, head of comms at Jeeves, published "What I learned working with the Latin American tech scene in Miami"
• Javi Santana, co-founder of Tinybird, wrote "It all goes well the second time: technical support"

Podcasts 🎧

• SeedRocket interviewed Philippe Gelis and Antonio Rami, co-founders of Kantox
• Marketing4Ecommerce interviewed Bernat Farrero, co-founder of Factorial
• Itnig interviewed Alex Cruz, founder of Clickair and former CEO of Vueling and British Airways
• Product Hackers interviewed Raul Torres of PLD Space