Fintech startups to watch – meet the Wise Guys Fintech 5 batch
We are thrilled to unveil the latest Wise Guys Fintech 5 batch, with the teams that have kicked off an intensive 5-month acceleration program journey that runs in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) through its TaiwanBusiness – EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund, and which will take place in Bucharest Romania.
“We chose Romania for our fifth Fintech program because it is a country we believe is poised for hypergrowth in the startup space in the coming decade. We are doing this in a new partnership with EBRD after a successful collaboration in the last Fintech program in Vilnius, Lithuania.”
Cristobal Alonso, Global CEO at Startup Wise Guys
The acceleration program runs from July until December 2022. Besides the initial €90K investment, selected startups go through an intense mentorship-driven program carefully designed to help them fine-tune their product and sales strategy and prioritize the next stages of development on their roadmap toward success. In addition to the standard curriculum, 1:1 sessions by relevant mentors and dedicated vertical panels are also organized for participants.
It’s great to see that diversity is in no short supply with this batch either, we have 7 nationalities across founding teams from Estonia, Romania, Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Hungary. The pandemic has challenged many companies and whole industries as well as those in financial services, so it is truly encouraging to see these Fintech startups –real hustlers– tackling issues from fast invoicing tools to embedded insurance systems, data-driven mobile bank platforms, alternative financing solutions and more.
Without further ado, here are all the teams:
Abillio (Latvia) – is a company-as-a-service for independent professionals and solopreneurs that takes care of tiresome formalities, such as company registration, invoicing, accounting and taxation.
Baoba (Hungary, US) – is a technology and marketplace for insurance partners to empower end customers with personalized, automated, and data-driven add-on coverage for specific events.
F-Ray – (Turkey, Estonia) – develops machine learning software that saves time and efficiency for financial statement users by making instant financial analyses and evaluations of public and non-public companies.
Zerek.ai (Estonia, Kazakhstan) – is a Data-driven mobile bank personalization platform
Pointship (Estonia) – is a marketplace for your unused rewards and benefits such as miles, points, hotel rewards, game items, and event tickets.
iFactor (Romania) – is an alternative data analytics SaaS & hybrid SME lending platform democratizing the SMEs access to financing.
PerksKit (Azerbaijan & Estonia) – empowers businesses to create a streamlined employee experience to maximize HR investments and drive business results.
Anachron technologies (Lebanon & UK) – Helps your users take control of their financial situation. Build your own experience around our APIs and launch within weeks.
TelkimGel (Turkey & Estonia) – is a Customized Financial Marketplace Platform that connects users with banks and insurance companies.
MintHive (Lithuania) – makes Marginal VAT application, tracking, and sharing between businesses simple, easy, and accurate.
Akurateco (Ukraine, Netherlands) – develops a payments orchestration platform to organize fragmented payment processes in the most efficient way.
Wise Guys Fintech 5 program will be managed by Juan Alonso-Villalobos as Program Director, Razvan Suta as Managing Director, and Viktoria Kálmán, as Program Coordinator. The team will champion these startups with the support of several Fintech veterans such as Jevgenijs Kazanins and Martin Koppel.
“The Fintech landscape across Europe is maturing, the solutions are increasingly more complex in response to the recent pandemic but not only. That just shows the ability of founders to find real problems and respond with a creative solution. At SWG we are thrilled to have found and handpicked some of the most ambitious founders who want to grow their solutions in Romania, the Baltics, and Europe in general. We truly feel we can help them through the Fintech 5 accelerator.”
Razvan Suta, Fintech Program, Managing Director
We have already invested in 50+ Fintech startups, to mention a few: Kevin (raised Series A of $65 million in May), Montonio (raised $12 million Series A funding in April), as well as EstateGuru, ONDATO, PayQin, Kevin, Investly and many others. For the second time in a row we are also running the program in partnership with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) through its TaiwanBusiness – EBRD Technical Cooperation Fund, the previous one being the Wise Guys Fintech 4 program held in 2020 in Vilnius, Lithuania.
