The start-up scene in emerging Europe is flourishing: new money is constantly pouring into the market. To keep you up to date with the latest investments, innovations, engines and shakers, every Monday Emerging europe offers you a practical overview of the start-ups in the region that have closed funding rounds during the previous seven days.

Serbian games studio Nordeus bought by Take-Two Interactive for 321 million euros

US game publisher and developer Take-Two Interactive announced the acquisition of Serbian game company Nordeus at a price of 321 million euros (378 million US dollars).

Of the total price, 185.7 million euros comes from initial cash, while an additional 74.3 million comes from newly issued shares of Take-Two common stock.

Nordeus was founded in 2010 and quickly grew into one of the most successful IT companies in Serbia on the wave of the success of its football management video game. Top eleven.

“Over the past decade, Top eleven increased its audience, revenue and profitability through Nordeus’ introduction of live operations and continuous gameplay innovations that continue to drive continued consumer engagement. It’s also incredibly exciting for Take-Two to expand our operations into a beautiful, vibrant city like Belgrade; the local science and engineering talent in Serbia is very strong and the quality of the Nordeus team speaks volumes, ”said Michael Worosz, Executive Vice President and Head of Strategy and Independent Publishing at Take-Two Interactive .

Now Nordeus joins the Take two stable of mobile game developers which already includes Socialpoint (acquired in 2017) and Playdots (acquired in 2020).

The founding team of Nordeus will continue to lead the company.

“We are delighted to join the Take-Two family,” said Branko Milutinović, co-founder and CEO. “We are excited to take our products and our work locally, to the next level with them as we pursue our goal of placing Serbia on the global gaming map.”

Romanian mobile marketing platform Recart obtains 2.8 million euros in new funding

Budapest-based marketing platform Re-scale received € 2.8 million in funding, including approximately € 2 million from the Enter Tomorrow VC fund, and a further 205,000 each from Oktogon Ventures and Day One Capital.

The mobile marketing platform helps online stores by convincing interested shoppers to complete their abandoned purchases. It does this through behavioral data analyzed in real time.

Recart was founded in 2016 to address what the founders saw as a serious problem with e-commerce – that more than three-quarters of purchases never go to potential customers. The process is interrupted and the items remain in the virtual shopping cart. Today, the company helps e-commerce businesses stay in touch with their consumers more efficiently by automating the marketing activities and communication of online stores on various messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger.

Users of the platform can thus be addressed with great precision, sellers can choose to re-address their potential customers by offering them offers such as personal discounts.

So far, according to Recart, the company has generated an additional $ 165 million for its customers in revenue that would otherwise have been lost.

With this new funding, the company will further develop its software, increase sales and expand its presence in the United States.

Tallinn / London-based investment platform Lightyear raises € 1.23 million in pre-seed

A new European investment platform based in London and Tallinn, Light year, is expected to launch later in 2020 and has already received € 1.23 million in pre-seed funding from influential start-up founders, Taavet Hinrikus of Wise, Sten Tamkivi of Teleport and Jaan Tallinn of Skype.

Lightyear was founded in the summer of 2020 by the first members of the Wise team, Martin Sokk and Mihkel Aamer, when the duo realized that investing in Europe was still a problem.

Lightyear is believed to combine a low barrier of entry with a global mindset, avoiding high fees, hidden costs, and the complicated nature of investing. The company’s team includes people with investment expertise, with many alumni from Wise, Robinhood and Revolut.

When the product launches in the third quarter of 2021 (the waiting list is open), it will offer access to 1,500 stocks and ETFs and will have no fees up to £ 3,000 per month. Beyond that, a nominal charge of 0.35% will apply.

“Investing in Europe is very far from what it should be. Professional and experienced investors have good options open to them with clear pricing and top-notch tools, but ordinary investors don’t have that, ”says Sokk. “Lightyear is going to be the first truly commission-free investment platform in Europe, and using our experience in transforming the way the world approaches currency conversion, our goal is to completely change the name of the game when it comes to currency conversion. investment. “

Latvian open banking start-up Nordigen raises 2.1 million euros

Nordigen, a free open banking API start-up, raised € 2.1 million in a founding round with participation from Black Pearls VC, Inventure, Highgoal Capital, ID4 Ventures, Superangel, Calchas Holding and angel investors Artis Kehris, Henry Nilert, Gerri Kodres and Riivo Anton.

Founded in 2016, the start-up provides PSD2 (Payment Services Directive) data connections to all major European banks.

These connections are used by just about all banks and fintechs, and the difference Nordigen fact is that they offer them for free.

“It’s time to end screen scraping in Europe. It’s expensive and bogus. Banks have built amazing APIs to allow people to migrate their account information securely and without friction. Nordigen allows developers to connect to these banking APIs for free, ”explains Rolands Mesters, co-founder.

But if the service is free, where does the revenue come from?

According to the company, from paid access to data analysis and information.

“Access to banking data becomes a commodity and Nordigen also creates the next valuable layer by turning fragmented financial data into usable information for various types of financial institutions,” says Aleksander Dobrzyniecki, partner at Black Pearls VC.

Top photo: Top Eleven official Facebook page.

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