Big 20: The biggest rounds of European IT investments in 2014

Original author: Robin Wauters
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We have collected this valuable information over the past 12 months and prepared a detailed review of the 20 largest rounds of financing for European technology companies in 2014. Enjoy and share with colleagues.

The year 2014 is already far behind, but in addition to the most significant events that took place in the world of European IT companies over the past year, it makes sense to deal with the largest rounds of investment.

The Delivery Hero, a Berlin-based online food delivery platform, is rightfully in first place on the list, raising a whopping $ 523 million in investments over the past year alone. It should be noted that we deliberately did not include Rocket Internet in the list below, even though the company sold a fairly large portion of the block of shares on the eve of their October initial public offering ( IPO ).



Brief analysis


The graph above shows that in 2014, three European companies in total attracted more than a billion dollars of financing (and one of them accounts for more than half of this amount). We also see that last year at least twelve companies received more than $ 100 million of investments. Thirteen, if you include Westwing, which came close to this bar, raising $ 96.5 million. Eighteen companies received more than $ 75 million.

It is worth noting that trading platforms and projects involved in electronic commerce remain popular: more than half of the companies in the list can be attributed to these categories. The three companies on the list deal exclusively with online orders and food delivery, including the already named numero uno (Delivery Hero, Takeaway.com and Foodpanda).

Other popular areas of activity are payment systems and financial technologies (Adyen, Klarna and Borro), as well as software development (Scytl, ironSource, Blue Yonder and ElasticSearch).

Geography of the largest rounds of financing in 2014


Of the five largest funding rounds of 2014, three occurred in Germany (it should be noted that two of them are associated with Berlin companies of the Rocket Internet family aimed at the emerging markets of Southeast Asia and Africa), one in the Netherlands, and one in Russia.

If you look at the twenty main fundraising campaigns of 2014, you can see that Germany takes the first place in the list of companies (six), followed by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, each of which contains three companies. The Scandinavian countries also showed themselves, given that the list includes two Swedish and two Danish companies (surprisingly, there is not a single Finnish company). Spain, Israel, Russia and France each have one company in the list.

Below is a detailed list of the twenty largest rounds of financing European technology companies in 2014:



Delivery Hero (Germany) raised $ 523 million in three rounds spent in 2014 ($ 88 million in January, $ 85 million in April and a whopping $ 350 million in September) . Founded in May 2011, Delivery Hero wants to capture the ever-growing field of online food orders. To date, the company has raised $ 635 million, and will direct these funds to strengthen its influence around the world.

Of course, rapid worldwide distribution is expensive. In the conditions of strong and constantly growing competition in the field of online food orders, marketing costs are quite high. Hence the cash infusion.

But $ 635 million in less than 4 years? What do their investors know, what do we not know?

Investors: Vostok Nafta, Insight Venture Partners, Phenomen Ventures, Team Europe, Kite Ventures, Ru-net, Tengelmann Ventures, Holtzbrinck Ventures and Point Nine Capital.





Adyen (Netherlands) raised $ 250 million. The international payment startup is benefiting from its rapid growth: over the past year, a company based in Amsterdam has doubled the number of processed payments and its profit.

Adyen has created a platform that allows companies to accept payments from all over the world. The company has entered into partnerships with all major credit card companies, as well as with local payment systems around the world. Adyen needs money to start working in all corners of the world and gain an advantage over a large number of nascent competing companies.

Investors : General Atlantic, Index Ventures, Felicis Ventures and Temasek Holdings.





Lazada (Germany) raised $ 250 million. Despite its astonishingly fast growth, Southeast Asia's e-commerce platform is still at an early stage. Retail giant Lazada needs money to maintain and consolidate its leading position in key markets (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam).

The company reports that since June 2014, sales, or rather gross revenue (GMV), of goods sold through a website or mobile applications have doubled.

Investors: Temasek, Rocket Internet, Verlinvest, Kinnevik, Tesco, Tengelmann Ventures, Summit Partners and Access Industries.





Ozon (Russia): $ 150 million. Ozon Group CEO Maëlle Gavet said in an interview that capital will be used to accelerate the growth of the company. And how is an online store of such sizes as Ozon going to do this?

Of course, investing in logistics infrastructure (storage, reception points, and so on), expanding the range and increasing the speed of delivery, while lowering prices. We can confidently say that this requires significant cash.

Investors: AFK Sistema and the MTS telecommunications company controlled by them.





Jumia / Africa eCommerce Holding (Germany) raised $ 150 million. Jumia, headquartered in Berlin, is an online store with a large number of product categories: from clothing to electronics, in Africa. 1,500 employees work in ten different countries.

As part of the Africa Internet Group, Africa's leading Internet association, Jumia prides itself on its own logistics infrastructure and fleet. The growth of an online store with a large number of "offline" elements (as in the case of Ozon and Lazada) costs a lot of money - hence the amount of funding.

Investors: Summit Partners, Rocket Internet, Millicom, and Africa Internet Group (AIG).





Kobalt Music Group (UK): $ 140 million Kobalt collects royalties on behalf of 2,000 famous individuals and companies, such as Paul McCartney, Disney, Dr. Luke, Max Martin, Dave Grohl, Maroon 5 and Skrillex.

Kobalt began to take steps to independently create intellectual property, for which it receives royalties. Today, Kobalt monitors the copyright of more than 600,000 songs. To make this number even larger, the company needs substantial investments.

Investors: Balderton Capital and private equity firm Michael Dell MSD Capital.





Momondo Group  (Denmark) raised $ 130 million. The Momondo Group (based in Denmark, but located in the UK), the progenitor of travel sites with online reservations for Cheapflights and Momondo, has recently been looking for a buyer.

Last October, the company received $ 130 million from Great Hill Partners, a private Boston investment fund. After raising funds, Momondo is valued at $ 210 million. With the money received, the company plans to make several transactions in order to continue its development.

Investors: Great Hill Partners.





Klarna (Sweden): $ 120.5 million. Headquartered in Stockholm, Klarna allows thousands of online stores to accept payments from millions of customers across Europe.

Exclusion of banks as intermediaries from the payment chain is an expensive enterprise. Klarna also needs extra financing in order to pay for the acquisition of the German SOFORT system and relocation to new offices in Stockholm.

Investors: Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic and Atomico.





Borro (UK): $ 112 million. Borro is an online platform that allows people to borrow money from expensive watches and other luxury goods.

Borro CEO Paul Aitken told TechCrunch that the money raised will go to expand the business in the UK and the United States, as well as to increase the amount of cash loans Borro can provide.

Investors: Victory Park Capital, Canaan Partners, Eden Ventures, European Founders Fund, Augmentum and Ribbit Capital.





Scytl (Spain) raised $ 104 million in three C tranches. Scytl, headquartered in Barcelona, ​​is the world leader in secure online voting and modernization of the election process, with a huge number of patents in this field.

Scytl claims that its solutions have been successfully used in more than 35 countries around the world over the past 10 years, but there are even more countries that can appreciate the modern and safe technologies for modernizing the election process. Fresh investments should contribute to the further development of the company.

Investors: Vy Capital, Adams Street Partners, Industry Ventures, Vulcan Capital Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and SAP Ventures.





Takeaway.com (Netherlands): $ 103 million. As in the case of Delivery Hero (see above), Takeaway.com wants to distribute its food delivery service around the world, and this requires investment in staff, offices and advertising.

Another reason for Takeaway.com’s profitable round was its acquisition of Lieferando.de, one of the largest food delivery services in Germany.

Investors: Macquarie Capital and Prime Ventures.





BlaBlaCar (France): $ 100 million. The BlaBlaCar service allows travelers to search for travel companions by car, providing them with cell phone numbers or driver emails to resolve travel costs.

The markets for car rental and co-travel in Europe (and not only) are quickly filled with powerfully funded competitors that threaten the BlaBlaCar business. To stay ahead and start work in other countries: Turkey, Brazil and India, BlaBlaCar needs extra money in the account.

Investors: Index Ventures, Accel Partners, ISAI French Foundation and Lead Edge Capital.





Westwing (Germany): 72 million euros / approximately $ 96.4 million. Westwing is an online store of interior and decor items that requires a large amount of money to store goods, distribute them and market them.

Westwing is part of the Rocket Internet family and therefore has relatively easy access to the wallets of wealthy investors - partners of the German incubator.

Investors: Odey Asset Management, Fidelity Worldwide Investment and Tengelmann.





ironSource  (Israel) raised $ 85 million. A company based in Tel Aviv is engaged in software development and helps developers distribute and make money on their desktop and mobile applications. The company's offices located around the globe employ approximately 450 people, and the company's annual earnings are about $ 250 million.

This was their first financing (the sale of secondary shares with Carmel Ventures did not count), and the money would go to hire employees, develop a product line and expand the company to an international level.

Investors: An unknown association of strategic and institutional investors from America, Europe and China.





Foodpanda (Germany) raised $ 80 million in two rounds in 2014. Because companies in the Rocket Internet family in emerging industries are well funded. That's why. As with Delivery Hero and Takeaway.com (listed on this list), Foodpanda wants to distribute its food delivery network around the world, and this requires investments in staff, offices and advertising.

Investors: Rocket Internet, Falcon Edge Management, Phenomen Ventures and Kinnevik.





Truecaller (Sweden) raised $ 78.8 million in two rounds. Truecaller allows smartphone users to identify incoming calls and manage their contact list. The service is used by about 85 million people around the globe, more than half of which are in India. Every day, the number of Truecaller users increases by 200,000.

The company raised first $ 18.8 million, and then another $ 60 million to stimulate further growth in the United States, India and Europe.

Investors: Sequoia Capital, Atomico and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB).





Blue Yonder (Germany) raised $ 75 million. Blue Yonder, a big data company founded in 2008 by nuclear physicist Michael Feindt, turned to New York-based investment firm Warburg Pincus for a bailout of $ 75 million to expand the company's global reach.

Investors: Warburg Pincus.





Tradeshift (Denmark): $ 75 million. Tradeshift offers B2B trading and collaboration software, and currently unites 500,000 companies.

To spread its influence to Asia, in particular to Japan, Tradeshift needed a helping hand, which Singapore venture company Scentan Ventures extended to them, and not only invested large sums, but also offered a partnership to help develop business in the region.

Note: According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Tradeshift could have received an additional $ 30 million, just the data was not confirmed at the time of publication. It is likely that in 2014 the company raised a total of $ 105 million.

Investors: Scentan Ventures, Notion Capital, Ru-net, Kite Ventures, Intuit and PayPal.





ElasticSearch (Netherlands): $ 70 million. Elasticsearch offers an advanced freeware search and analytics engine used by large companies such as Facebook and The Guardian.

To scale, they need additional capital, in particular, from investors with extensive experience working with open products and corporate software. The money received will go to further development and commercial activities around the world.

Investors: New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Benchmark Capital, and Index Ventures.





FarFetch (UK): $ 66 million. FarFetch is an online store for independent fashion boutiques. The company, headquartered in London, told TechCrunch that the investment will go to international expansion in the United States, Brazil and Asia, as well as multi-channel marketing.

Investors: Vitruvian Partners, Condé Nast International and Advent Ventures.

Other notable rounds of funding announced this year include: SoundCloud (announced $ 60 million), Prezi ($ 57 million), Arago ($ 55 million), iZettle ($ 53.5 million), Huddle ($ 51 million), HelloFresh ($ 50 million) ) and Moovit (also $ 50 million).

Note: When the amount of financing was announced in euros, we converted this amount into US dollars at the current exchange rate.



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