Inovo VC, a Warsaw, Poland-based early-stage VC firm that invests in tech startups from CEE and helps them globally expand, closed its third fund, at €105m.
Private investors, who account for more than €55m managed by Inovo, have been joined by institutions including IFC, European Investment Fund, and Poland’s PFR Ventures. Private investors consist of European family offices and Polish tech entrepreneurs including Rafał Brzoska, founder and CEO of logistics company InPost, Marcin Żukowski, co-founder of Snowflake, and Aternus Investment Group owned by the Wałach brothers, founders of the consumer healthcare company Walmark.
Inovo Fund III will continue Inovo’s strategy in discovering and fostering tech startups from CEE, aiding them in capturing global markets. It plans to invest in 20-30 companies, with a single investment ticket spanning from €0.5m to €4m, and follow-on investments of up to €10m. Inovo VC aims to invest in startups in the Seed stage but can occasionally join companies in pre-seed and Series A rounds.
Led by Tomasz Swieboda, Michał Rokosz and Maciej Małysz, the fund will invest in startups all over Central and Eastern Europe, and founders from this region who are building startups anywhere in the world. The team looks for companies with the potential to conquer global markets and grow to $100 million in revenue in just a couple of years. Inovo is a generalist fund, but its investment team is especially capable in areas like healthcare (Inovo invested in Infermedica, Jutro Medical, uPacjenta, and Index Health), developer tools (Spacelift, Archbee), and AI & Machine Learning (Zowie, Pathway, Quantum Boost, AI Clearing), with business models spanning from SaaS-enabled marketplaces, through B2B2C, B2B, to enterprise B2B.
Out of 30 portfolio companies of Inovo VC, 6 have surpassed a valuation of over €100 million:
- Booksy – a SaaS-enabled marketplace for beauty services,
- Infermedica – an AI-powered technology for preliminary medical diagnosis and triage,
- Packhelp – a custom-made packaging producer,
- Preply – a global language learning marketplace, connecting tutors with students,
- Spacelift – a Terraform-compatible CI/CD platform for infra-as-code, and
- Tidio – live chat, chatbot and mailing solutions for micro-businesses.
Over 65% of capital invested in Inovo Fund III by the private LPs, comes from recurring investors, who have already joined prior funds and express continuous confidence in investment decisions and fund performance.
FinSMEs
27/06/2023