We are excited to introduce our first cohort of the year. We have 13 new exceptional startups divided by their industries.
FinTech:
Klasha is an online universal checkout that allows international retailers to accept payments online in African currencies.
Highlights: Raised: $285,000
Monthly revenue projection: $0 for Jan 2021 as prelaunch, Dec 2021 $4.5m gross sales through our payment gateway.
Founder: Jessica Anuna
Website: www.klasha.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Klasha
HQ: Lagos, Nigeria
Money raising: Seed, $750- $1m
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Akiba Digital is a South African startup that helps Financial Services Providers monetize their data through the power of predictive insights and alternative scoring. Financial Services Providers in Africa and the rest of the world are unable to optimally extend products to individuals and small businesses categorized by traditional scoring models as the unscoreable population for lending and other financial products. With our product, gugu.ai, we enable lenders to do what they are really good at – to sell money, efficiently, by reducing the risk using alternative insights.
Highlights:
– IBM Partnership
– TransUnion Partnership- $430K raised (pre-seed round).
– Current commercial contract with BNP Paribas subsidiary to process over 10M consumer data records.
– Currently onboarding 11,000+ SMEs through a large bank in Africa.
– Currently onboarding 2,000+ retailers through a large retail property owner.
Revenue Projections: January 2021: $5,500 & December 2021: $125,000.
Founder: Tebogo Mokwena
Website: www.akibadigital.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Akiba Digital
HQ: South Africa, Johannesburg.
Money raising: $500K for pre-seed round | $2M for Seed
round in early 2022.
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CleanTech:
CZAR-Power exists to bring energy independence to every American. We combine solar power inversion, Electric Vehicle fast charging, and stationary storage connection in one customizable and patented system.
Highlights:
– Strong relationships with a variety of organizations. Some of these include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Eversource Energy, Tufts University, iSun Energy, Boston Solar, National Grid, and the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (MassCEC).
– Received $1.1 M from a mix of angel investors, as well as a $250,000 grand prize as winners of the 2019 Massachusetts Clean Energy competition.
Monthly Revenue Projection: Our current burn rate is approximately $10k/month. However, in order to stay competitive, we will need to increase
our rate to $100k/mo for 8-10 months. This sprint will allow us to rapidly gain UL safety and reliability certification and become fully mass-production ready.
Founder: Anthony Frisone
Website: www.czar-power.com
Company’s LinkedIn: CZAR-Power
HQ: Boston, USA
Money raising: A late-seed/pre-Series A round of $1M, with a follow-on $4M round for expansion.
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Adgero makes retrofittable kinetic energy recovery systems for Class 7 and 8 trucks that can be upgraded to full electric systems when charging infrastructure allows. Companies can start using up to 30% less fuel today on any truck and with no investment in charging infrastructure.
Highlights:
– Customers include one Tier-1 OEM supplier, a leading Australian bulk haulage
firm and one of Europe’s leading truck lessors.
– In negotiations with a second Tier-1 OEM supplier on a Europe & North American distribution agreement.
Monthly Revenue Projection: Monthly revenue January 2021: 10,000 USD.
Projected Monthly Revenue: December 2021: 400,000 USD.
Founder: Mack Murray
Website: www.adgero.eu
Company’s LinkedIn: Adgero UK Ltd
Money Raising: $2,000,000 USD series A
HQ: United Kingdom
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Data Analytics & Machine Learning:
DataCalculus is the first software that not only empowers data experts to be four times more productive but also enables the executives to develop AI-Driven strategies in one single day. Now, Csuites and heads of departments can confidently create their action plans by data-validated strategies. It handles all the complexities behind the scenes and provides the ultimate experience for the end user. It means saving time, money, and human resources for our customers.
Highlights:
– The software have been tested by over 200 users.
– Pre-seed fund received from Startup Wise Guys.
– An angel round closed from three successful entrepreneurs.
– Over 20 big projects are in the trial and we expect to close the deals shortly.
Estimating to reach about 100K EUR MRR by the end of this year.
Founder: Saeed Talebzadeh
Website: www.datacalculus.com
Company’s LinkedIn: DataCalculus
HQ: Estonia, Tallinn
Money Raising: 600K USD, Seed Round
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AI:
Formaloo is the next generation of data analytics. With Formaloo you can Use your own data to analyze your customers, your business and even predict the future. Formaloo adds an AI-powered data expert to SMBs & SMEs so they can really understand their business and their customers and act on it to boost their Loyalty, LTV and CX.
Formaloo is built for businesses, not data scientists. It’s super simple to use and understand, you don’t have to know data analytics or coding and best of all, it requires no data experts to operate it.
Highlights:
– 12,000+ Clients, 1.7M+ Analyzed Customer Data, 2000+ backend integrations in
businesses, (#1 Data Collection company in MENA based on MAU).
– We bootstrapped the company from the start and we’re cashflow positive.
– For market expansion, we raised two pre-seed and seed rounds in 2020 from StartupWiseGuys &
ExpertDOJO.
Monthly Revenue Projection: Jan 2021: 8000$ & Dec 2021: 55000$
Founder: Farokh Shahabi
Website: www.formaloo.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Formaloo
HQ: Tallinn, Estonia
Money Raising: 2M $ in the first half of 2021
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imMail is a real-time collaboration platform which brings your company to the next level of collaboration. It is easy to use and
centralizes all your collaboration processes in one place only. Discover imMail for free and get to know a new way to communicate at work.
Highlights:
– Raised 735k USD.
– More than 1,000 companies registered.
– 12k active users.
– 3k paid users 20+ resellers.
– Distributors in 4 continents.
Monthly Revenue Projection: 3K USD MRR – Jan-2021.
Monthly revenue projections for December: 2021 – USD 100k.
Founder: Leonardo Valença
Website: www.immail.ca
Company’s LinkedIn: imMail
HQ: Alberta / Canada
Money Raising: We are raising USD 600k in exchange of 10% Seed bridge round (preparation for Series A).
CPG:
XICAMA™ is an innovative, sustainable and first-to-market functional (prebiotic) health brand rooted in science, steeped in nostalgia and good for you from the inside out.
Created by Celebrity Nutritionist Mona Sharma, and award-winning beverage brand architects Bar Lab, the founders have reimagined the superfood jicama to deliver on its restorative and immune boosting benefits. Making Xicama™ the next global superfood brand.
Highlights:
– An official beverage for Coachella 2019/2020.
– Best selling cocktail 2019.
– Mona Sharma’s appearances on The Doctors, Red Table Talk, Vogue promoting Jicama’s gut-health benefits.
– Mona’s client list of social influencers include Will Smith & Smith Family, Julianne Hough, Hrithik Roshan, & more.
– Approved for national distribution by KEHE, DPI.National hospitality partnerships across hotel, bar, and cruise-lines.
– Appeared on Dragon’s Den (Canadian Shark Tank).
– Secured investment from one of the Dragon’s (Jim Treliving).
Monthly Revenue Projection: Jan 2021 1k, 10k for Dec 2021.
Founders: Mona Sharma & Craig Goodwill
Website: www.xicamalife.com
Monna’s Website: monasharma.com
HQ: Venice, CA
Money Raising: 1M USD
Industry: CPG
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MusicTech:
Tunedly is the first music discovery platform that focuses on music only. Music fans can discover tomorrow’s biggest breakthrough artist and become partial owners of the next chart topper. Singers and songwriters compete for fan likes based on music only and have the opportunity to get a music publishing deal in a complete level playing field. Tunedly signs the best songs to publishing deals and places them in film, TV and ads through our publishing partner Spirit Music Group, generating royalties and sync license fees.
Highlights:
– Over 6,000 songs on the platform.
– Partnership with Harvey Mason jr. (CEO of Grammys), Mathew Knowles (Father of Beyonce) and Spirit Music Group (one of the world’s largest independent music publishers).
Monthly Revenue Projection: January 2021: $15,000 –December 2021 projected: $83,000
Founder: Chris Erhardt
Website: www.tunedly.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Tunedly
HQ: Incorporated in Delaware, but the team is fully remote. The Founders and the technical lead are based in Canada.
Money raising: $1M
Industry: MusicTech
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Real Estate:
SolidBlock makes property work for everyone. We are building a new asset class based on real estate, combining the stability of the property market growth and efficiency of blockchain-based financial products. SolidBlock creates tradable digital assets backed by real estate that grant investors rights to revenue, dividends, or interest and allow them to benefit from the growth of their property as well as trade their assets at any time.
Highlights:
– Raised $18 million through Templum Markets and Indiegogo.
– Issued the first ever successful commercial property digital offering for $18M in St. Regis hotel (single asset REIT). See Aspen Coin Use Case.
– Over $200K in revenue since launch.
– $850K raised from BuiltUp Ventures VC from the $2.8M seed round.
– Closed deals valued at over $50M with expected earnings for SolidBlock of over $1.5M in the next 12 months.
– Advanced partnerships with major players including the Chamber of Digital Commerce, North Capital, Realto and more.
Monthly Revenue Projections: $50K Jan 2021 & $700k December 2021.
Founder: Yuval Wirzberger
Website: www.solidblock.co
Company’s LinkedIn: SolidBlock
HQ: Israel
Money Raising: 2M USD, Seed.
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Search & Data Discovery:
ContentMap is a revolutionary SaaS platform for finding and working with files and information, across multiple storage places and apps, simultaneously. Users can find, manage and share information easier and faster than on other platforms. Information is found up to 350% faster and the number of mistakes is reduced by 90%. Company executives use ContentMap for finding and managing sensitive information and user permissions to avoid data disaster.
Highlights:
– More than 30 customer companies (re-occurring customers).
– 5,000 licenses of ContentMap have been sold for $1 million in revenue.
– ContentMap AB (Sweden) was founded 2018 and ContentMap Corp. (USA) 2020. Our U.S. patent was approved 2019.
– An external study by Sigma Solutions shows that we find documents 350% faster in ContentMap with 90% fewer mistakes.
Monthly Revenue Projection: Jan 2021 0 ARR, Dec 2021 1M USD ARR.
Founder: Tomas Hultgren
Old website: www.contentmap.se
New website: (under development) www.epage.se/contentmap/
Company’s LinkedIn: ContentMap
HQ: ContentMap Corp.: SF California, HQ Europe: ContentMap AB in Sweden (subsidiary).
Industry: Search & Data Discovery
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MarTech:
Large corporations are really bad at communicating. They have a hard time building human connections and communicating with empathy. And they are flying blind. They make marketing decisions based on how they feel they should communicate instead of using data. Instoried helps large companies make their marketing and communications content more human with a data-driven, scalable and repeatable approach using AI.
Highlights:
– Raised $1.5M.
– $500K in bookings last quarter.
– Grew 4X during Covid19.
– Recieved 3 acquisition offers, refused all.
– 5 million data points have been used to build the proprietary database.
Founder: Sharmin Ali
Website: www.instoried.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Instoried
HQ: Bangalore, India. Looking at registering in the US soon.
Money Raising: $3M
Industry: MarTech
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HR Tech:
Moodbit is the first employee engagement solution that enables managers to understand their teams in real-time, and to
employees to improve their wellbeing and productivity, without the need to fill out outdated and time-consuming surveys.
Highlights:
– Money Raised: 300K.
– Users: +200 SMB + Fortune 500 companies (NEC, NTT, Latam Airlines).
– MoM growth: 30%
Monthly Revenue Projection: January $15K, Dec 2021: $180K.
Founder: Miho Shoji
Website: www.mymoodbit.com
Company’s LinkedIn: Moodbit
HQ: New York, NY
Money Raising: Seed Round, $1.5M
Industry: HR Tech