News March 17, 2022: Yabie, Nordtech, Ecotype, Pliance, Storytel and more

Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Yabie (Stockholm, flexible and mobile POS & payment platform) acquired Infrasec, Stockholm-based provider of cloud-based solutions for tax compliance & smart payments. Financial terms were not disclosed (Swedish, machine translation).

Financing rounds

• Nordtech Group (Stockholm, acquirer of niche software companies): SEK1B (€96M, $106M) from around 20 unnamed existing investors (Swedish, machine translation).
• Ecotype (Uppsala, simplifying nature information and digitalizing forestry): SEK8M (€760K, $850K) from VEQ and LRF Ventures (English, Swedish).

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News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs

• Pliance provides API-based anti money laundering automation for fintechs and other industries. Various high-profile corruption scandals among Swedish companies as well as the sanctions against Russia are fueling demand, says Siam Choudhury, CEO of the Stockholm-based startup (Swedish, machine translation).
• Storytel, Stockholm-based audiobook and ebook subscription service, is laying off 100 out of its 700 employees (Swedish, machine translation).
• Spotify is recruiting people to work on early-stage, experimental projects related to web3 and blockchain, according to two job ads (English / FT paywall, alternative URL).
• Klarna's acquisition of PriceRunner, which was announced in November 2021, has reportedly been approved by Sweden's Financial Supervisory Authority (Swedish / DI Digital paywall)
• Kim Fai Kok, Truecaller veteran, shares learnings after his first 12 months as professional angel investor (English / Sifted paywall, alternative URL).
• Northern Swedish startups can now apply for SEK44M in innovation checks through Vinnova (English).
• Orderhero, Stockholm-based digital solutions provider for restaurants, plans to go public on the Nasdaq First North Growth Market in April at a valuation of SEK55M (€5.3M, $5.8M) (Swedish, machine translation).
• The European Space Agency and AI Sweden are opening a space lab in Gothenburg to work on AI in new space applications and applications for Earth observation (English).
• E-commerce sales in Sweden dropped by 17% in February 2022 compared to the same period of 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).

Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond

• France-based Educapital raises Europe’s largest edtech fund at €100M, targeting €150M, to invest in 20 European edtech startups from post-seed to Series B, with Series A as the main target (English / Sifted paywall, alternative URL).
• Investor appetite continues to grow for “restaurant tech” companies (English).

Other interesting things from Sweden

• The latest Sustainable Brand Index for Sweden has been published. IKEA, Coop and Änglamark occupy the overall top 3. Swish scores the victory in the "Digital services" category, Matsmart ranks #1 in "E-commerce" (English).
• Why is there a Swedish-speaking village in rural Ukraine? (English / The Local paywall, alternative URL).

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That's it for today.