News July 28, 2022: CellRebel, Bluedot Crypto, Loppla, Doconomy, VOI and more
Here is today's curation of news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for subscribers of Swedish Tech News.
💡
This post has been unlocked and made available for free a month after publication.
Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.
Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!
Subscribe to Swedish Tech News to get access to a daily newsletter that brings you a brief overview of news from the Swedish startup & tech sector, curated by Martin Weigert.
Or, if you prefer a free weekly newsletter, subscribe to Swedish Tech Weekly!
Mergers & acquisitions
- CellRebel (Helsingborg, provider of mobile networks analytics) was acquired by US-based provider of network intelligence and connectivity insights Ookla. Financials were not disclosed (English).
Funding news
- Bluedot Crypto (Stockholm, upcoming crypto exchange): SEK20M (€2M, $2M) from undisclosed, mostly international investors. The startup plans to raise a larger SEK200M round in early 2023 (Swedish, machine translation).
>> Daily updated, subscriber-exclusive Google sheet with all funding rounds raised by private Swedish startups and scaleups. Request access.
News from Swedish startups, the tech sector and VCs
- Spotify revealed that it paid a combined €291M ($295M) for its recent acquisitions of Findaway, Podsights, Chartable, and Sonantic (English).
- Loppla, founded by Maria Wiberg and Emma Perning, is a newly launched classifieds site for online garage sales, through which unwanted items can be sold and bought in bulk (Swedish, machine translation).
- Doconomy, Stockholm-based creator of climate-friendly fintech solutions, has signed a strategic partnership with German green power provider LichtBlick, as part of which Doconomy's "Lifestyle calculator" will be integrated into LichtBlick's new consumer app (English).
- 🎧 Swedish tech companies are negatively affected by long processing times at the Migration Agency, according to a report by Swedish Radio (English, 2 minutes).
Swedish tech earnings reports
- VOI (Stockholm, e-scooter provider) generated revenue of SEK927M (€88M, $89M) in 2021, an increase of 140% compared to 2020. Growth drivers were the German and UK markets. Operating loss doubled from -SEK436M in 2020 to -SEK886M in 2021 (Swedish, machine translation).
Other interesting things from the startup/VC world & beyond
- European online fashion retail giant Zalando with headquarter in Berlin, is secretly working on an expansion into the US, which is expected to happen in 2023 (German, machine translation).
- In climate tech and critical infrastructure software, Private Equity exits are becoming more frequent (English).
Other interesting things related to Sweden
- Sweden’s GDP increased by 1.4% in Q2 2022 (English).
- As of September 1, people riding e-scooters on sidewalks in Sweden are risking fines (Swedish, machine translation).
- The Lonely Planet guide to trail running in Sweden (English).
- Swedes abroad can start voting as of today (English).
+++
That's it for today.
