Southeastern Europe, a region traditionally known in tech for outsourcing and affordable engineering talent, has managed to flip the plot lately.
The Balkans have seen record growth and the emergence of scaling successes such as competitor Twilio Infobip, Car manufacturer Bugatti Rimac and other unicorns.
But what about startups with the potential to reach a valuation of over $1 billion in the region?
Sifted has compiled a list of nine of the most promising companies in the Balkans. The list is a combination of cash-efficient scale-ups that have grown with limited amounts of venture capital, as well as companies that have attracted significant capital from some of the world’s best-known investors.
We’ve looked at companies that are valued at over $100 million or grow in user numbers or revenue three to five times a year. Publicly available information from sources such as App Annie and Crunchbase was used where possible, in other cases Sifted asked the companies directly.
Photomath
A B2C educational app with over 320 million downloads worldwide that allows users to scan printed text and handwritten math problems using a device’s camera or enter and edit equations with their calculator.
Photomath breaks down math problems so users can understand basic concepts and often solve assignments and homework faster. The app is most popular among elementary school students, their parents and teachers. The team is made up of serial entrepreneurs with previous outings; Founder and CEO Damir Sabol’s fame was to bring high-speed internet to Croatia. Photomath is backed by Menlo Ventures, GSV Ventures and Cherubic Ventures.
Amount raised to date: $29 million
Founder and CEO: Damir Sabol
Place of origin: Zagreb, Croatia
HQ location: San Mateo, USA
What is the next step for the company: Product monetization.
Gideon
Gideon is a Croatian company that builds flexible autonomous mobile robots. Its two main products are Casey — used for box picking — and Trey, an autonomous forklift that manages trailer loading and unloading operations. The company is backed by Koch Disruptive Technologies and Deutsche Bahn Digital Ventures.
Amount raised to date $37.5 million
Co-founders: Matija Kopic, Josip Cesić, Kruno Stražanac and Edin Koco
Place of origin: Zagreb, Croatia
HQ location: WE
What is the next step for the company: After competing pilots in the region with early adopters Atlantic and Tokić, the company now plans to roll out its Trey forklift solution, launched in April this year.
Return
Hailing from Osijek, Crotia, Orqa produces video headsets that allow people to remotely control vehicles like drones from a pilot’s perspective and builds ultra-low latency video solutions for unmanned systems and telepresence. . The team is led by Srdjan Kovacevic, who has a background in finance and pension fund management, and Ivan Jelušić, a serial entrepreneur with a background in consumer electronics. Orqa’s investors include DayOne Capital from Hungary and a number of well-known angels.
Amount raised to date: €1.7 million
Founder and CEO: Srdjan Kovacevic
Place of origin: Osijek, Croatia
HQ location: Dublin
What is the next step for the company: Sell to the defense industry through their Vegvisir joint venture. This Croatian-Estonian entity focuses on the development of an armored vehicle situational awareness system in accordance with NATO standards. Timely given the current geopolitical situation in Europe.
Tenderly
Tenderly is a blockchain platform for monitoring, alerting, debugging, and simulating real-time smart contracts on Ethereum. The team originally met while working at MVP Workshop, a regional crypto and Web3 development organization. The company was founded in 2019 and has since grown into a global team of more than 60 employees, according to LinkedIn. The company has received investments from leading investors such as Accel, Spark Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Point Nine Capital.
Amount raised to date: $58.6 million
Founder and CEO: Andrej Bencic
Place of origin and registered office: Belgrade, Serbia
What is the next step for the company: Although the company itself doesn’t seem to be affected by the crypto winter, most of the company’s user base still is, so the team is using this time to expand its product portfolio.
orgnostic
Orgnostic is a people-as-a-service analytics platform founded by Luka Babic, former head of human operations at Infobip, a regional pre-IPO scale-up, and Igor Bogicevic, former co-founder and CTO of Seven Bridges Genomics, a -up bioinformatics. Orgnostic helps companies organize and connect all their HR data on one platform and learn from that data. The company was backed by Earlybird, Charlie Songhurst, SC Ventures and the Serbian Entrepreneurs’ Angel Syndicate.
Amount raised to date: $5.9 million
Founder and CEO: Luka Babic
Place of origin: Belgrade, Serbia
HQ location: Cambridge, United States
What is the next step for the company: After closing several major global enterprise accounts, the team is focused on building the product, as well as scaling their product and business organization.
Reversing Labs
ReversingLabs is a software supply chain risk-focused cybersecurity scaler. The founders, Tomislav Peričin and Mario Vuksan, are cybersecurity veterans. The company has received funding from Crosspoint Capital Partners, JP Morgan, ForgePoint Capital and Prelude.
Amount raised to date: $81 million
Founder and CEO: Mario Vuksan
Place of origin: Zagreb, Croatia
HQ location: Cambridge, United States
What is the next step for the company: The company continues to focus on its software supply chain and security risk product portfolio, while expanding the development team in Zagreb and pushing sales and marketing in the United States.
Treble
Treblle is a Zagreb-born startup that processes API requests on its platform while helping developers understand what’s going on with those requests. Founders Vedran Cindric and Darko Blazevic previously ran a developer store through which they experienced a lot of difficulty with customer APIs, which motivated them to found the company. The company raised a pre-seed round from Nauta Capital in 2021 and will close the Series A round soon.
Amount raised to date: €1.2 million
Founder and CEO: Vedran Cindric
Place of origin: Zagreb, Croatia
HQ location: London, UK
What is the next step for the company: Having recently onboarded 12,000 developers on its platform, Treblle is adapting and monetizing its API product to enterprise customers.
Insightful (formerly Workpuls)
Founded in Belgrade, Insightful is an employee productivity platform with over 130,000 users and a major benefactor of Covid and the shift to remote working. The company has received investment from MHS Capital, StartLabs and local venture capital firm South Central Ventures.
Amount raised to date: about 4 million dollars
Founder and CEO:Ivan Petrovic
Place of origin: Belgrade, Serbia
HQ location: San Francisco, United States
What is the next step for the company: Insightful wants to maintain its growth and momentum, while expanding into new markets and verticals.
Meeting
Company: Fonoa is an API-based platform for automating taxes on online transactions. The founding team met while working at a regional Uber office where they discovered the need for a tax API solution that even Uber would use. Fonoa has attracted investors such as Index Ventures, OMERS Ventures, Coatue, Dawn Capital and FJ Labs and won clients such as Uber, Zoom, Bolt and Booking.com.
Amount raised to date: $85 million
Founder and CEO: Before Tremac
Place of origin: Zagreb, Croatia
HQ location: Dublin, Ireland
What is the next step for the company: Continue to expand the product portfolio while complying with new regional legislation.
Josipa Majic is an entrepreneur and writer based in Zagreb, Croatia.
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