Avokado – the online shopping service – raises a seed round

/by

Hungarian start-up „Avokado”, what is the concept behind it?

Our days revolutionizing the FMCG e-commerce sector is not easy. The ones taking this challenge in Hungary are part of a start-up named „Avokado”. The goal is to bring a smooth and unique shopping experience to users who are enabled to shop from multiple stores while getting all delivered at once to their doorstep. On the other hand, the goal of the retailers is to enable expansion to the digital world while widening their customer base.

Avokado’s current investment

Current seed funding gave proof of Avokado’s business concept & and business model. The investor is ED Group (investment holding of Balázs Várkonyi and Gyula Kelemen). Várkonyi and Kelemen are very well-known successful entrepreneurs in the field of e-commerce which is bringing waste experience and „smart money” to the Avokado team.

Excellent founding team

Some of Avokado’s team members are Tibor Székács, Erik Barcsay and Szabina Matócza each individual with decades of experience in e-commerce. Tibor is the CEO of Avokado, coming with experience in execution & and leading the whole process of launching „Aldi” in Hungary, after which was the Group Managing Director of Hofer, responsible for more than 800 stores. Erik founded BIG FISH, an e-commerce-focused software company, that offers its services tailored to market leader players’. Kristóf is coming with the background of introducing and leading Tesco Online in Hungary. Szabina built Háda’s Webshop (Hungary’s largest second-hand fashion online store) handling 40 000 products monthly and overseeing expansion to 6 countries, other than that at Cherrisk.com she managed the international rollout, and as VP of e-commerce for 4 years overseeing the rollout to 3 countries and building the team from 6 to 70 people.

Partnering with ED Group is bringing an additional layer of expertise. Várkonyi back in 2001 year founded with his partner Extreme Digital web shop, which expanded to 9 countries. In 2019 it merged with eMAG, another regional e-commerce giant and Várkonyi became its CEO with more than 800 employees. In 2023 from eMAG group separated Vatera.hu (online auction portal) and Ingatlan.com (Hungarian local major real estate website) and Balázs announced that Vatera and Jófogas (classifieds website) would merge and become the biggest domestic used goods market. During more than 2 decades of his e-commerce industry-specific experience, he gained numerous awards and recognitions.

Steady growth in online grocery

Some of the pain points in the online shopping current market are sometimes 10-25% higher prices than in stores, logistic struggles of bigger chains that can’t cope with short delivery times, missing best-seller products online, and no same-day delivery. Current retail market trends no doubt are moving the tendencies to the growing market of online shopping experience where Avokado sees an existing gap and market niche still to fulfill.
Proof of concept is also an example of Instacart in the USA that Avokado sees as a familiar idea that they would like to tailor to the domestic market needs, said Szabina Matócza, Avokado’s Managing Director.

Our role in securing Avokado’s seed investment

Absolvo is convinced that this team can build the next possible unicorn, and that’s why we joined them on this journey. Starting now with the first step (a seed round) and accompanying them for future A/B series rounds in the not-too-distant future. Our team proudly supported them in rethinking the growth strategy, positioning the story, financial planning and then establishing talks with local and international investors, negotiating the terms, and assisting in deal signing. More and other levels of achievements are yet to come!

 

Contentsquare / Hotjar acquired the UK-based tech company PingPong UX

/by

Our Client PingPong, the UK based UX design startup, a fully-integrated platform for UX research and user testing with 200+ clients, 175k+ testers in 100+ countries successfully closed its M&A deal with the global leader in digital experience intelligence and analytics Contentsquare.

The PingPong team and platform is technically joining forces with the Maltese-US giant user behaviour analytics company Hotjar, part of the Contentsquare portfolio, under the new branding “Hotjar Engage”.

The 6 years journey from PingPong to Hotjar Engage

PingPong was founded in 2016 with a clear mission: to simplify the user research process, breaking the „routine” of slow and fragmented process of user testing, knowing there had to be a better, more usable, more productive and more convenient way.

They started with a simple, bootstrapped prototype and had to rely on friends and family to be their testers. After 6 years of dedication and hard work they have become a powerful user-testing platform with over 175,000 testers worldwide, with big brands and large customers in their impressive client pool.

And just last year, the team at Hotjar, trusted by 1.1M+ websites in 180+ countries, started using PingPong for user research.

Their teams ended up talking, and they came to realize they shared the same vision.

Hotjar wants every business to have the power to create product experiences people love. To do that, understanding and empathizing with the people using your product is essential. That’s what PingPong is all about: making it as easy as possible to gather the face-to-face feedback you need to build a product your users will love.

With this acquisition, PingPong is changing its name to Hotjar Engage, and will be fully integrated into the Hotjar portfolio, sitting alongside Hotjar’s existing products Ask (Surveys and Feedback) and Observe (Heatmaps and Recordings), while its product features remain unchanged.

The future – never seen growth opportunities as part of the Contentsquare / Hotjar family

The global leader in digital experience intelligence and analytics Contentsquare, based in Paris, France, has grown up from one French entrepreneur in a small Parisian attic to a global team of 1,500+, has raised USD 1.4 billion investments in total (the last one this year, a Series F round of USD 600 million).

Since 2019, Contentsquare has boosted its dynamic growth by acquiring Clicktale, Pricing Assistant, Adapt My Web, Dareboost, Upstride – and the product experience insights leader Hotjar in September 2021, to deliver cutting-edge insights to businesses of all sizes and across all industries.

This acquisition opens broad perspectives and enormous growth potential for PingPong; as part of the Contentsquare / Hotjar family, they will have more resources than ever to speed up product development, add new features, and expand their pool of testers.

PingPong UX was advised by Absolvo Consulting in the transaction process with Contentsquare / Hotjar.

Source: PingPong UX blog – Hotjar has acquired PingPong

Continest successfully raised EUR 6.5M VC funding round

/by

Our Client Continest Technologies, developing and manufacturing innovative, foldable modular containers has received a total of HUF 2.4 billion (~ 6.5M EUR) in a syndicated investment round with the participation of DBH, Focus Ventures and Hiventures to support its growth ambitions.

The current investment round is aimed to further boost Continest’s international business development and expansion, as well as to support the establishment of a new manufacturing unit to increase production capabilities.

Continest debuted on the internationally recognized Sziget Festival in Budapest, Hungary in 2017 with their mobile infrastructure solutions and 2 years later, in 2019, the entire service facility of ski world championship in Sweden was built by their containers. Beyond the purpose of office and event utilization, they are also developing tailor-made solutions for defence and medical industries (mobile COVID-test laboratories). Due to its foldable nature, the sustainable Continest innovation makes the process of logistics 80% more cost-efficient.

To accelerate industry-specific product developments, enter new European markets and support growth ambitions, Continest successfully raised 4M EUR venture capital in 2019 from DBH. Continest Technologies, founded in 2019, achieved a turnover of more than HUF 820M already in 2020, which dynamically increased to HUF 1.6 bln in 2021. 

“The global market developments of recent years and the increasing demand for sustainable development have led to global demand for temporary infrastructure solutions. That is why we see the next few years as being the decisive years for foldable modular container technology. Together with our new and existing capital investors, we have the opportunity to scale up and enter new markets with a very stable financing base, further contributing to domestic exports. The construction of our number two plant, which will be inaugurated in September this year, will open up the opportunity to produce in even larger volumes and to further develop our manufacturing technology“ said Dániel Tegzes, strategic director of Continest Technologies.

In 2021, the company inaugurated its first container factory in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, which is currently capable of producing 1,000 foldable containers per year and provides jobs for 53 employees. In the future, the Continest factory will use Industry 4.0 solutions, and the company’s state-of-the-art sheet metal plant and welding hall will be supported by robot technology for efficient production. The company is also planning a significant expansion of its workforce, with nearly 50 new jobs to be created by 2022. The second plant will also offer the possibility of in-house surface treatment of containers, and the annual production of containers will reach 3,000 units.

The company is currently working on developments such as the fully equipped kitchen container, cargo containers, which are also suitable for freight transport. Another ongoing project is the vertical farm container, which is being developed in partnership with Green Drops Farm and Baptist Relief Services to create a hydroponics-based crop production system without the need for topsoil.

In addition, Continest is continuously developing its containers for medical and defence use. In May 2022, the Hungarian Defence Export Agency signed the first cooperation agreement with the company, under which the military technology agency will assist Continest in international marketing and distribution.

“It was a long journey with full of challenges, but there was no doubt about the success with such a great team!” – said the transaction advisory team leader of Continest’s, Lénárd Horgos, partner of Absolvo. “By nature, venture capital is not primarily focused on investing into hardware and manufacturing companies, but Continest is a particularly good case study on how to grow a manufacturing company with rock-solid commitment to a 1+ bn business in a few years’ time and make it an attractive target for venture capital to invest. The Continest success story reflects the exceptional combination of manifested, intensively growing global market potential, a truly innovative and well-customizable technology and a committed, ambitious and visionary management team which is already proven to move its company forward. It was a great honour for us that – after the first successful investment round in 2019 – our team was trusted again to support Continest in preparing, negotiating and closing its current investment round. We are delighted to take part in achieving the current milestone but Continest’s growth journey is not yet over; moreover, I feel confident that a new Hungarian success story is just being born!” – added Lénárd Horgos.

 

Source: official press release

Innonic’s Shoprenter successfully sold its majority stake to the Polish e-commerce giant IAI

/by

Our Client Shoprenter, a member of the Innonic Group, a major SaaS-based e-commerce platform provider in Hungary agreed to sell majority stake to an international strategic investor to further exploit its growth potential in the CEE region and Europe.

In July 2021, Shoprenter closed a successful M&A transaction with the market leader Polish e-commerce SaaS provider company IAI (IdoSell), which acquired a majority stake (51%) in the Hungarian company.

IAI – backed by the leading digital PE fund in Poland and Central Europe MCI Capital – reported GMV (gross merchandise value) of EUR 2.6bn EUR in the fiscal year ending April 2021, and it provides e-commerce systems for 6000+ online stores and 1500+ online accommodation booking facilities.

The acquisition of its peer Shoprenter is one of the very first important milestones in IAI’s European and international expansion and becoming a global player.

Shoprenter was advised by Absolvo Consulting in the transaction process with IAI.

Conversific successfully closed EUR 2M late seed VC funding round

/by

Our Client, Conversific, a Hungarian ecommerce analytics tool developer, has just closed a late seed round of EUR 2M with Hungarian financial investors, Bonitas and Hiventures, after a successful seed funding round of EUR 0.5M in 2018 from Hiventures and the founder group Innonic. In the last transaction Conversific was advised by Absolvo Consulting.

The company offers ecommerce reports and benchmarks, data insights, as well as product and consumer analysis. It has 20k users from 180 countries, more than 90% of the sales is generated internationally, out of which 60% in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

The recently raised capital will be used for an international market research, subsequent innovation and further product development as well as sales & marketing investments to support international expansion, the co-founder and CEO Norbert Bodog explained.

The management is regularly approached by investors with buy-out intentions; however, the owners would only consider a full exit once the company becomes more sizeable, Bodog pointed out.

Conversific has been generating revenues since its first year of operation, and the annual turnover has increased tenfold since the seed funding. According to their financial plan, Conversific will reach the EUR 3M ARR (annual recurring revenue) point by end 2023, he added.

Conversific ranks first among the analytics tool on Shopify, which position the company aims to protect with its variety of features, as well as its freemium and monthly subscription-based SaaS pricing model.

Conversific’s main target group are micro and small sized companies, with up to 10-50 employees or around EUR 1M to 10M annual turnover, Bodog said.

The COVID-19 pandemics has not affected the company in a negative way, as operations easily moved to a remote working environment, he said, adding that on the other hand, global ecommerce growth has accelerated due to the lockdowns, that has a significantly positive impact on Conversific too. 

Congratulations to the Conversific team, thank you for the effective co-operation and we are happy and proud of being part of your success story! We wish all the best and good luck in achieving your ambitious goals!

Logiscool accelerates international growth with a 3.5 million EUR investment

/by

Logiscool, an international leader in coding education for children and teens, raised a 3.5 million EUR investment from Euroventures, one of the leading independent VC and PE firms in the CEE region. The current investment gives a significant boost to our Client Logiscool’s further international expansion and building its franchise network on the new markets.

Logiscool was exclusively advised by Absolvo’s growth financing team in the transaction process.

A Logiscool, a befektető Euroventures és a tranzakciós tanácsadó Absolvo csapata a tőkebevonási tranzakció zárását ünneplik

Logiscool launched its fun-based innovative coding school in Hungary in 2014, providing programming and digital courses and camps for children aged 6-18. Today it is present in 16 countries and over 100 locations, teaching more than 60,000 students. The rapid growth is the result of the introduction of the franchise model, which enables building the school network dynamically worldwide.

The success of the Logiscool method, which has ever-growing international popularity, has several components. Its modular curriculum is composed of more than 600 lessons allowing students to continuously improve their coding skills over several years. The company’s proprietary educational platform “grows” together with students’ age and knowledge level giving them the feeling of long term, successful achievement. The young and enthusiastic trainers make the courses friendly and inspiring to the students.

“We believe that acquiring the knowledge of the future can be enjoyable and fun. At Logiscool kids can learn the basics of logical thinking in a fun-based way, improve their problem-solving skills, understand complex processes and in later life they can use that knowledge in almost any workspace” – said dr. Anita Breuer, co-founder of Logiscool.

The company has previously received investment from NNG-founder and angel investor Péter Balogh. The investment helped in the development and the successful initial international launch: “Logiscool had already achieved what is rare for Hungarian brands: it is building a successful franchise network from Taiwan to Florida, and changes the life of ten thousands of children. Our big dream with the team is to teach one million children to code – that kind of ambition makes it really worthwhile to get up in the morning” – said Péter Balogh.

The current investment of 3.5 million EUR, led by Euroventures in co-investment with the experienced investor Márton Szőke (founder of Indextools which was acquired by Yahoo!, has had several successful exits with a past and present portfolio including among others AutoHop, Tresorit, Omixon and Bitrise) enables Logiscool to expand its HQ team in Budapest, to develop its educational offering and its local and international partnerships to  accelerate international expansion.

“This investment round is an important milestone in the life of Logiscool, it gives a significant boost to our further growth. It enables the development and expansion of the team, therefore we will be able to better support our partners and with our continuous developments we can gain and sustain our leading role worldwide. Our aim is to provide the best coding education to kids globally” – said Gyula Csitári, co-founder of Logiscool.

“We invested in Logiscool, because we see a rare combination of an excellent and devoted management with international experience, a rapidly growing global market and a technology-based, unique value proposition. It is a great opportunity and responsibility to be part of such a growth story” – said Péter Tánczos, director of Euroventures.

Source: official press release

The owner of EZIT sold his stakes to the European leader in hosting services Loopia Group

/by

EZIT Kft. and Magyar Hosting Kft. are significant players of the IT hosting market in Hungary, providing server-, cloud- and domain services for their clients. The owner sold 100% of the shares to the Sweden-based, private equity-backed Loopia Group, one of the most active players on the European IT hosting market, having dominant presence in Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

Absolvo advised the founder / owner of the companies, supported him in negotiating deal conditions (valuation; other relevant terms etc.), in the process of due diligence, in negotiating SPA, in signing and closing of the transaction.

Loopia Group is one of the largest domain and hosting service providers in Europe, with a revenue of approx. 23 million EUR and a client base of 500.000+, in owning to their extremely active acquisition strategy which is aimed to support their rapid expansion in Central Europe and the CEE region and strengthen their leading position in the Nordic area.

The Group acquired the Slovakia-based WebSupport, one of the largest Central-European web hosting service company with more than 100k clients in Slovakia and Hungary in February 2019. Their expansion has been followed by the acquisitions of Binero Group’s mass hosting business units in Sweden and Germany in June and Planeetta Internet Oy, the leading webhosting service provider in Norther Europe in August 2019.

Loopia closed M&A transaction with our Client EZIT Kft. and Magyar Hosting Kft. in December 2019 and they recently announced their acquisition closing with two major Finnish service providers, Suomen Hostingpalvelu Oy and Domainhotelli Oy.

A new investment brings Prefixbox’s e-commerce search to Poland

/by

Our Client Prefixbox, an AI powered e-commerce search provider, gets a seed investment from Euroventures to bring their e-commerce search to Poland, too.

Prefixbox has just received 500k EUR investment from Euroventures, a notable CEE investment firm, as the first part of a larger capital raising project. The investment will be used for deep product development along with supporting the international expansion of the Hungarian startup throughout the CEE region, with Poland as the first stop.

This investment gives a lot of confidence to the company to further improve their product search for webshops. Their solutions can increase the revenue generated by search users with as much as 47% for webstores, as well as provide a better-quality customer experience. Product search plays a more and more important role for e-commerce managers, along with the rapid growth of the industry and Poland is not an exception to that.

“This investment is a huge milestone in Prefixbox’s history. It gives us a boost to help us accelerate our growth, developing the team, and international expansion starting from Poland. We’ve had great traction with our existing Polish customers and are excited to open a new office to better support them and the market. Through developing our product and taking it to the world, we are striving to become the world’s best e-commerce search provider.”- said Istvan Simon, the founder and CEO of Prefixbox.

With this investment Prefixbox is planning to open a new office in the heart of Warsaw and build up a local sales and customer success team to be able to serve Polish customers’ needs and provide them with the best e-commerce search engines possible.

With existing customers from over 9 countries, Prefixbox’s clients in Hungary include – among others – Extreme Digital (edigital.hu), Rossmann (shop.rossmann.hu) and Praktiker (praktiker.hu), in Poland webstores such as Tania Ksiazka.pl, Militaria.pl or Cyfrowe.pl.

The startup was also recognized by Gartner in the 2019 “Market Guide for Digital Commerce Search”.

Prefixbox has been advised by the growth financing team of Absolvo in the transaction process.

Source: Prefixbox’s official press release

Genesis Capital acquired majority in 11 Entertainment Group of Hungary

/by

Genesis Private Equity Fund III (GPEF III), a private equity fund advised by the Prague-based Genesis Capital, has signed the acquisition of 61% of 11 Entertainment Group, provider of indoor family entertainment in Hungary.

GPEF III partnered with the business founder, Mr. Stefan Fritsch, to build a family entertainment specialist in the CEE region. It is the eighth investment of GPEF III and its historically first independent investment in Hungary.

Our Client 11 Entertainment Group provides indoor family entertainment in trampoline parks, indoor playgrounds and laser tag arenas in Hungary. The founder and owner of the business, Mr. Stefan Fritsch, started the first playground in 2009 as a hobby-business together with his wife Réka Kovács to entertain his own children, while being a top manager in the automotive industry.

This point was an offtake of Mr. Fritsch’s career as entrepreneur. ”Entrepreneurship was a passion for me since I was a little boy selling comics at the street corner of my home town. As entrepreneurs we have the full freedom to influence the future in a direction we want to have it and by that we can generate the positive flow needed to overcome the immense hurdles and work load on our way to make things happen”, says Mr. Fritsch.

Since 2009, Stefan and Réka grew the business to 5 parks (Cyberjump) accommodating more than 500,000 visitors annually. The business has ambitions to expand further into the neighbouring countries to become a Central European family entertainment leader; to support its growth it was looking for a well-capitalised private equity investor with extensive international experience. In preparation for this plan, 11 Entertainment Group was recently strengthened by experienced top managers who also become shareholders of the group. GPEF III and Mr. Fritsch both allocated potential further capital to support the growth plan.

“The capital entry of Genesis will enable us to focus on rapid expansion of our entertainment concept throughout Central Europe,” says Stefan Fritsch, while adding: “and it is a proof that our team has done an excellent job in building the business to date. By having Genesis on board with its expertise and 20 years of experience in multiple industries and branches, we will get useful input to become even more professional in developing our growth”

“We perceive the investment into 11 Entertainment Group as an opportunity to support the strong entrepreneurial story of Stefan and realize the growth potential in currently underdeveloped family entertainment markets in Central Europe” comments Radan Hanzl, Partner at Genesis Capital, a local investment advisor to GPEF III. “We believe that Stefan’s track record in operational excellence and his approach to business expansion make 11 Entertainment Group an excellent platform for further growth”, Radan Hanzl concludes.

“As a bonus, this transaction also fulfils our vision of GPEF III expanding its region of operation beyond its traditional core markets of the Czech Republic and Slovakia”, adds Tatiana Balkovicová, Investment Director at Genesis Capital.

Sell-side transaction advisory was provided by Absolvo Consulting and Baker McKenzie.

 

For more information about trampoline park please watch the video introduction: Cyberjump Hungary

or visit website: https://www.cyberjump.hu/en/

 

Source: official press release

Ceres Pharma acquires Ceumed

/by

CEUMED, a major supplier of baby- and healthcare OTC products in CEE successfully closed M&A transaction with the Belgium-based Ceres Pharma which acquisition opens the door to Ceres Pharma in the CEE region. Vendor’s co-founders Marc Coucke and Mario Debel played key roles in building, expansion and exit of 3.6 bn EUR of the global pharmaceutical giant Omega Pharma. CEUMED was advised by Absolvo’s M&A team in the transaction process.

More information in vendor’s official announcement: Ceres Pharma completes first foreign acquisition