Summer is scaling up and so are Southeast European startups. The Recursive has dived into the waters of four countries in the region and selected 12 companies speeding up on their scaling journey. They were founded in the last decade with an impressive track record, development, market reach, and partnerships and raised funding at Series A and further rounds. From sectors such as financial services through to agtech, mobility, artificial intelligence, and space tech, here is a list of 12 Southeast European scaleups based in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, or Croatia, and their lessons about growth.
Solution — Founded in by Teodor Blidarus and Sergiu Negut, FintechOS is a fintech platform that provides personalized and low-code digital infrastructure for banks, insurers, and other financial institutions. They assist organizations in offering customers personalized solutions by adopting a data-driven approach based on different sources, like databases and IoT devices. Their reach spans 20 markets and four continents.
FintechOS aims to use their latest investment to scale internationally and promote their solution to financial institutions around the world where the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, is present. The company reached a 3. They plan to use their latest investment to scale their solution internationally in Europe and North America and add extra capabilities to its conversational AI.
Solution — Founded in by Alexandru Lapusan, Cosmina Pirlea, Cristian Ionescu and Piotr Swieboda, Instant Factoring is a fintech company that provides flexible working capital financing through invoice financing for small businesses and micro-companies, turning invoices into cash in a few easy steps based on a proprietary automated data driven scoring technology. Their latest investment will be used to fuel development in the Romanian and Serbian market and accelerate digital financing processes through technology and software development, create new financial products, and expand operational capabilities.
Their financial platform combines credit cards, payments, expenses, cash management, and pre-accounting into one integrated experience to give companies maximum control and visibility over their business spending. Payhawk aims to open three new offices in Amsterdam, Paris and New York and expects to triple its employee base by the end of for its market expansion and the development of new features. The first SEE startup which caught the attention of Lightspeed Venture Partners and the first Bulgarian investment of Endeavor Catalyst is also partnering with banks on developing a credit card business model.
