News September 19, 2022: Instabee, Encare, Kale United, Ophena, imagiLabs, Measure and Change, Tillitis, Car.info and more
Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.
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Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.
Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!
Mergers & acquisitions
- Instabox and Budbee, Stockholm-based last mile delivery companies, have announced the intention to merge under a new holding campany named Instabee. If approved by the Swedish Competition Authority, Instabee would be valued at SEK18B (€1.7B, $1.7B). Budbee cofounder Fredrik Hamilton will assume the role of CEO and Instabox cofounder Alexis Priftis will become Executive Chairman of the Board. Instabox and Budbee’s founders, along with Kinnevik, will be Instabee’s largest shareholders, along with previous backers which include H&M, EQT Ventures, Creades, Verdane, AMF and Flat Capital among others. (English, Swedish).
Funding news
- Encare (Stockholm, SaaS solution that helps healthcare providers reduce suffering and costs associated with surgery): SEK26M (€2.4M, $2.4M) in a funding round led by Sciety, for the continued international expansion (English).
- Kale United (Stockholm, holding company for plant-based food innovation): SEK18.8M (€1.7M, $1.7M) from IP Group and other undisclosed investors (Swedish / Breakit paywall).
- Ophena (Gothenburg, D2C brand creating innovation for riders): SEK4.4M (€400K, $400K) from new angel investors Patrik Mossberg and Jacob de Geer (the latter via the "Draknästet" TV show) as well as existing investors Inger Blomberg and Jenny Blomberg (Swedish, machine translation).
- imagiLabs (Stockholm, coding platform for both students and teachers): £200K (€230K, $230K) from Morgan Stanley, as part of the 2022 Multicultural Innovation Lab (English).
- Measure and Change (Växjö, SaaS tool for monitoring of carbon emissions): SEK2.5M (€230K, $230K) from Almi Invest and Visive (Swedish, machine translation).
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News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs
- Mullvad, Gothenburg-based VPN provider, is creating a sister hardware company named Tillitis, which plans to release an open source USB security key – and thus might become a competitor to Yubico's YubiKey (English).
- Car.info is a Swedish car database startup founded in 2014 by serial entrepreneur Jonas Bonde (also the founder of price comparison site Prisjakt). In 2021, the Ängelholm-based company doubled its revenue to SEK21,2M (€2M, $2M), and turned profitable (SEK6.3M). Bonde tells Breakit that the company isn't even actively doing sales yet (Swedish, machine translation).
- Dealroom published a report on the "State of Impact Startups in 2022" with a focus on the Nordics, showing that Sweden still leads for raising impact investment (English / PDF).
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
- Norway's dominant mobile payments solution Vipps' planned merger with Finnish counterpart Pivo is being blocked by European anti-trust authorities, while the merger with Danish MobilePay is allowed to proceed (Norwegian, machine translation).
- SoftBank sold it's 15% stake in the publicly listed Norwegian edtech gaming startup Kahoot to General Atlantic, accepting a loss (English).
- Wednesday will mark 238 days without a tech IPO worth more than $50M, surpassing the previous records set in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and the early 2000s dotcom crash (English / FT paywall, alternative URL).
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That's it for today.