Estonia is termed Europe’s most entrepreneurial country by the World Economic Forum. Living up to this name, the country is home to popular companies including Skype, Wise, Bolt and Pipedrive.
Already, home to more than 1000 startups, Estonia has a vibrant and welcoming startup community. Also, investments in Estonian startups are prominent and surpassed €1 billion milestone last year.
The trend is said to continue this year too and we have already come across numerous funding rounds pumped into Estonian companies. Since the advent of this year, we saw Bolt, Uber’s ride-sharing and food delivery business rival get €628 million to scale its products. Besides this, Tuum, a next-generation core banking technology provider, closed €15M funding in a Series A round.
The country’s online identity verification startup Veriff attained unicorn status earlier this year by raising $100 for its video-AI identification platform. Talking about other notable startups, OCCO, a designtech startup and robotics startup Starship also bagged investments in 2022.
Having said that, TFN has listed 10 Estonian startups to watch for in 2022, which are set to take on the world.
Minterest
Founder/s: Josh Rogers
Founded year: 2020
Total funding: $6.5M
DeFi lending protocol from Tallinn, Minterest is a unique borrowing/lending protocol that has the world’s first buyback mechanism, which automatically passes on revenue to contributing platform users. The protocol is designed to make DeFi fairer for users. It lets users receive protocol rewards on top of industry-leading borrowing/lending rates, thereby creating the potential for the highest long-term yields in DeFi.
A few days back, Minterest picked up $5.52 million in the token sale. With this, the company’s fully diluted valuation accounts for $514 million. The company is gearing up to introduce its DeFi 2.0 model offering a greater capital efficiency and a fairer incentive structure.
Duckt
Founder/s: Cagri Selcuklu, Evren Yazıcı, Goksen Atalay
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: $574K
Duckt came up with the world’s first universal electrical scooter charging station. It is touted to deliver better operations and better experience for people and the city. Its solution enables shared micro-mobility vehicles to be charged while parked during the day. These charging stations are compatible with almost any scooter or electric bike.
Recently, Duckt that was founded by Turkish entrepreneurs in Estonia was acquired by US-based Acton, which provides cloud-based software infrastructure to American-based micro-mobility vehicles.
FoodDocs
Founder/s: Karin Repp, Katrin Liivat
Founded year: 2017
Total funding: $3.1M
A Tallinn-based female-founded startup FoodDocs is a smart and fast tool for creating and maintaining food safety management systems. It helps businesses create a fast HACCP plan that meets all legal requirements. Its HACCP builder helps create a HACCP plan in less than one hour. It is possible to get a HACCP plan that is 500x faster and 15x cheaper without handling a lot of paperwork or hiring a food safety consultant.
Recently, FoodDocs secured nearly $2.4 million to solve food safety compliance issues with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The investment round was led by Bonnier Ventures with Forward Venture Capital and Spring Capital along with existing investor United Angels VC.
eAgronom
Founder/s: Kristjan Luha, Robin Saluoks
Founded year: 2016
Total funding: $10.8M
An agtech startup from Estonia, eAgronom helps farmers reduce the administrative load, which is a paper-based process. Its solution has been developed into one of the largest farm management software solutions in Europe. Already, eAgronom helps over 1,500 agribusinesses to achieve higher yields and income.
Earlier this month, eAgronom bagged $7.4 million in a Series A equity round led by Yolo Investments and ZGI Capital along with participation from Trind VC, Iron Wolf Capital and United Angels VC.
Primex finance
Founder/s: Dmitry Tolok, Vlad Kostanda
Founded year: 2021
Total funding: $5.7M
Primex Finance is a cross-chain prime brokerage liquidity protocol for cross-DEX margin trading with trader scoring mechanisms. Here, lenders provide liquidity to pools where traders can use it for leveraged trading in cross-DEX environments. While lenders can earn high yields, their interest is generated from margin fees and profits on successful trades. Also, they get the flexibility to manage their risks and return by providing liquidity to a variety of risk buckets that regulate trader risk strategies.
Recently, Primex Finance closed $5.7 million in a funding round co-led by Stratos Technologies and CoinFund alongside participation from Hypersphere, and GoldenTree Asset Management and leading liquidity providers – Wintermute, GSR, and LedgerPrime.
Skeleton Technologies
Founder/s: Oliver Ahlberg, Taavi Madiberk
Founded year: 2009
Total funding: $230M
An Estonian supercapacitor company Skeleton Technologies manufactures and develops high energy and power density ultracapacitors based on patented curved graphene. These ultracapacitors deliver a high power, high energy, reliable and long-life storage solutions across industries.
Last month, Skeleton Technologies picked up €37.6 million in an extension of its Series D round. The investment round was led by Wise co-founder Taavet Hinrikus of Taavet+Sten and will be used to scale up its curved graphene-based supercapacitor production in Germany.
Binalyze
Founder/s: Emre Tinaztepe
Founded year: 2010
Total funding: $11.7M
Binalyze develops digital forensic tools for enterprises that help in understanding the full extent of a cyber breach. Its Enterprise Forensics platform enables enterprises to respond effectively to cyber threats.
A few days back, Binalyze raised $10.4m in seed funding in round led by OpenOcean along with participation from Earlybird Digital East. The company will use the funds to extend cloud-native capabilities to enhance coverage in cloud and container environments and accelerate its expansion.
Testlio
Founder/s: Kristel Kruustük, Marko Kruustük
Founded year: 2012
Total funding: $19.5M
Testlio is the originator of networked testing. Its software testing platform, a global network of expert freelancers, and robust client services power burstable software testing, irrespective of the device, location or language. Testlio is headquartered in Palo Alto and operates from Estonia as well.
In October 2021, Testlio closed $12 million in Series B financing led by Spring Lake Equity Partners and existing investors. Last month, the company was recognised with 14 awards across three categories in the G2 Winter 2022 Grid Report.
Certific
Founder/s: Taavet Hinrikus, Liis Narusk, Jack Kreindler
Founded year: 2020
Total funding: NA
Founded by unicorn builder Taavet Hinrikus (Wise co-founder) the Estonian healthtech Certific has launched the world’s first certified remote COVID-19 testing service. Certific’s technology and testing process allow users to take a medically certified Covid test safely in the comfort of their home. Through the unique video-recorded testing procedure, Certific will verify their identity, their test device, the accuracy of their sampling, and their test result.
EyeVi
Founder/s: Gaspar Anton
Founded year: 2019
Total funding: NA
EyeVi develops an AI-powered platform for geospatial data production, as well as mobile mapping. With advanced geospatial mapping and predictive data analytics, the company creates the perfect conditions for smarter budget allocation.
Recently, EyeVi nabbed $2 million in a seed round for its mapping technology. The round was led by ff Venture Capital from New York. Other investors include RKKVC, Decacorn Capital, Iron Wolf Capital, Superangel, Spring Capital, Kaamos Group, and business angels from the country.
