It’s almost the end of the year and what better way to reach the finish line than to look at the most promising female-founded tech startups in Southeast Europe of 2021 or with founders born in our region. While we are preparing an update on the Who are Romanian Women in Tech piece, you can also read the stories of 60+ women in tech from across the region.
Let’s take a look at the milestones entrepreneurs reached and do a round-up of the solutions we’ll be hearing more about in 2022.
Below you will see 10 startups founded or co-founded by savvy business ladies that showed traction this year in verticals like delivery, software, AI, digital insurance, EdTech, MedTech, and sustainability. If you do not know which one to choose, under the poll you can read about their fundraising, development phases, and 2022 goals.
You have until December 22nd to support your favorite female-founded startup with a vote in our survey, and until December 10th to nominate others.
The winners of the 1st and 2nd spot will receive prizes consisting in:
>>> #1st spot – 1-year free access to all premium functionalities of The Recursive’s Growth Club (worth €220+)
>> #2nd spot – Architect of Change T-shirt and a Google Call with us.
*Organized alphabetically by startup name*
Founded: 2019
Based in: Bucharest, Romania
Industry: Delivery
What they are building: A delivery service that offers a fast 24h offline-to-online transition solution.
Milestones in 2021: They raised €500K investment in July, scaled their services in other Romanian cities – Brasov, with plans for next year to add more cities, go international, and launch a B2C delivery app.
Alina Vandenberghe – Chili Piper
Founded: 2016
Based in: US-based (Romanian co-founder and Romanian employees in product, sales, and support)
Industry: Software
What they are building: A B2B schedule automation software for teams to save time and bandwidth with no emails going back and forth.
Milestones in 2021: They have raised an investment of €27M in a Series B in May to speed up product development, sales, marketing, and are looking for more team members in SEE, especially Romania.
Founded: 2018
Based in: Bucharest, Romania
Industry: AI
What they are building: An intelligent chatbot that aids employees in communicating efficiently, saving time, increasing quality, and lowering costs.
Milestones in 2021: Received a €2M Series A investment at the beginning of the year, announced revenue of over €2M, a five-times growth than the previous year, and was classified as a conversational AI Innovator by IDC.
Founded: 2013
Based in: Cambridge, Massachusetts, US (Bulgarian founder and R&D team in Sofia)
Industry: Digital Insurance
What they are building: A virtual insurance agent powered by AI and predictive analytics.
Milestones in 2021: Raised a $100M Series B funding to develop their product and the team, but also to scale their operations.
Founded: 2014
Based in: Bucharest and Cluj, Romania
Industry: EdTech
What they are building: A smart educational management tool targeting schools to save time and bridge communication between parents, teachers, and students.
Milestones in 2021: Raised €1.8M to scale its education management platform and won first place at the InnovX-BCR accelerator.
Founded: 2017
Based in: Kosovo
Industry: EdTech
What they are building: A platform that offers a subscription service for educational engineering kits for children to practice at home.
Milestones in 2021: Reached €400K on SeedBlink to set up a production line in Kosovo.
Maria Chatzou Dunford – Lifebit
Founded: 2017
Based in: London, England (Greek-born founder)
Industry: MedTech
What they are building: A cloud genomics platform for big data research with open-source tools, marketplace, browser, and AI functionality.
Milestones in 2021: Lifebit raised $60M to accelerate biomedical research and innovation.
Founded: 2018
Based in: New York, US(Bulgarian founder and Bulgarian team)
Industry: Software
What they are building: A networking platform for managers to connect members, schedule online meetings, and collect feedback.
Milestones in 2021: They have raised $2.7M to expand their product and engineering teams.
Founded: 2017
Based in: Berlin, Germany (Bulgarian-born founder)
Industry: Sustainability
What they are building: A SaaS platform for carbon accounting, decarbonization, ESG management, and reporting to serve users worldwide.
Milestones in 2021: Raised ~€8.6M Series A in November, and around €2.6M in March to expand its carbon accounting platform internationally.
Founded: 2017
Based in: Sofia, Bulgaria
Industry: AI
What they are building: A no-code platform for AI digital assistant management.
Milestones in 2021: Raised undisclosed funding round to develop their solution, build the team, and expand the market reach.
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