START-UPS

10 hot start-ups from Stockholm to watch

7 Mar 2019

Scenic summer aerial panorama of the colourful Old Town in Stockholm, Sweden.

Stockholm. Image: © Scanrail/Stock.adobe.com

Stockholm is one of the premier tech cities of the Nordics and indeed Europe, with a flair for creating globe-trotting tech enterprises.

As we noted the last time we visited Stockholm two years ago, the Swedish capital is sizzling with start-up potential.

Indeed, we noted 15 Stockholm start-ups to watch, including many high fliers that include Klarna, H&D Wireless, Na-kd and Universal Avenue, to name a few.

In fact Stockholm is so advanced as a tech metropolis, it has even revealed plans to use excess heat generated by data centres to heat entire municipalities.

Key start-up events on the Stockholm tech calendar include the monthly STHLM Tech Meetup, which we attended on our last visit. Invest Stockholm rightly proclaims Stockholm to be ‘the unicorn factory’ when you consider the success of names such as Spotify, Skype, Minecraft, Dice Studios and King, to name a few.

And so, here are 10 new start-ups from Stockholm to watch in 2019 and beyond.

Baffin Bay Networks

Baffin Bay Networks delivers a cloud-based security platform for network and application attack prevention. Led by CEO by Joakim Sundberg, it recently acquired a US company called Loryka, which is focused on botnets and internet of things (IoT) security research. Baffin Bay Networks last year raised $6.4m in funding, bringing total funding to date to $7.2m.

Doctrin

Doctrin aims to help healthcare providers to digitise patient journeys with the right tools, processes and training. Founded in 2016 by Ashkan Labaf and Magnus Liungman, Doctrin’s digital platform allows healthcare providers to prioritise, treat and follow up with patients in a safe and secure way online. Doctrin has had a total of five funding rounds, worth $18.5m in total. The most recent of these yielded €10m in a Series A round in 2017 led by healthcare provider Capio and life sciences fund HealthCap, with Inbox Capital and Norrsken Foundation as co-investors.

DPOrganizer

Regtech player DPOrganizer has created a SaaS tool that helps businesses to map, visualise and manage how they process personal data and be compliant with GDPR rules. Founded in 2015 by Andreas Yannelos, Egil Bergenlind, Sebastian Norling and Lelle Cryssanthander, DPOrganizer last year raised €3m in a Series A funding round.

Funnel

Funnel is an automated marketing data collection and transformation platform that integrates with more than 400 advertising and marketing sources. Founded in 2014, Funnel is led by CEO Fredrik Skantze and last month raised $8m in a funding round led by Oxx, bringing total funding to date to $21m.

Ignitia

Ignitia claims to be the world’s first hyperlocal tropical weather forecaster. It works in Ghana, Mali and Nigeria to provide detailed forecasts to more than 450,000 subscribers by SMS with a high level of accuracy, and help farmers to make better informed decisions. Founded by Liisa Smits, Ignitia last year raised $1.1m in a funding round.

Ivbar

Ivbar wants its data analytics platform, Era Vision, to revolutionise healthcare and provide what it calls ‘collective care intelligence’. The firm was founded in 2012 and is headed by Jonas Wohlin, who has more than 10 years of experience running healthcare organisations. The tools provided by Ivbar allow medical professionals to easily interpret data in the hopes of providing insights about health outcomes and resource allocation. Ivbar has raised $6m in funding to date.

Karma

Karma is an app that helps restaurants and supermarkets to reduce food waste, including about 600 retailers in the UK and major supermarkets and brands such as Sodexo, Radisson and Scandic Hotels. Founded in 2016 by Elsa Bernadotte, Mattis Larsson, Ludvig Berling and Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren, Karma last year raised $12m in a Series A round.

Logical Clocks

Stockholm’s Logical Clocks provides enterprise support for its open source Hopsworks platform, which integrates popular data processing systems such as Apache Spark, TensorFlow, Hops Hadoop, Kafka and more. Leveraging a user-friendly interface, it simplifies the process of converting reams of data into actionable insights. The service has proved popular and boasts high-profile tech industry clients such as Spotify, Oracle, Mobilaris, Scania and more. A recent seed funding round, which was announced in November 2018 and led by Inventure, netted Logical Clocks €1.3m.

Mavenoid

Mavenoid is a Swedish automation start-up that was founded by Shahan Lilja and Gintautas Miliauskas in 2016, and launched in 2017. It is a troubleshooting platform that serves as the first level of technical support. A customer arriving at a website with Mavenoid is asked a series of structured multiple-choice questions that narrow down the issue with their product. In October 2018, Mavenoid raised $1.9m in a seed funding round led by Point Nine Capital, with participation from Creandum and angel investors.

VOI

VOI provides an electric scooter-sharing service that can be accessed easily through its app. Based in Stockholm, VOI was founded last summer by Fredrik Hjelm, Douglas Stark, Adam Jafer and Filip Lindvall. The company has just raised $30m from Vostok New Ventures, Balderton Capital, LocalGlobe, Raine Ventures, and new investors Project A and Creandum. This capital injection brings, on top of a $50m Series A round last November, the total amount attracted by the company to date to almost $83m.

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John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com