Tag Archive for: Szlávy Zsuzsanna

Logiscool accelerates international growth with a 3.5 million EUR investment

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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