25 Jun The Nordic Web Weekly

Welcome to another edition of The Nordic Web Weekly, where we bring you the latest from The Nordic Web as well as curating all the need-to-know news from The Nordic Startup scene.Curated and written by @neilswmurray

This Week on The Nordic Web

And just like that, the grocery market is hot once more. Despite it being one of the first industries to be disrupted by digital, Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods has sparked a revived interest in the space, as people begin to consider the state of the landscape and what the further consequences of Amazon entering this space could be.The Nordics already has a fairly competitive online grocery market, in this post we take a deeper look at the current leading players.
The Nordic online grocery market landscape
The announcement of Point Nine Capital’s newest fund last week brought the number of new European funds publicly announced in 2017 to 35.In this analysis we look at how many of these are headquartered in the Nordics, how many actively invest in the Nordics as well as comparing this to 2016.
Of the 35 new European funds announced so far this year, 1 in 3 invest in the Nordics
One way of measuring which are the ‘hottest’ verticals for investors right now is to compare the number of investments year on year. When doing this, it’s clear that some of these verticals are seeing more of an increase in interest in 2017 than they were last year.In fact, three verticals in particular appear to be doing so, as they’ve already surpassed the total number of investments they saw in 2016 before we are even halfway through this year, setting them up for a significantly stronger 2017.
3 verticals have already seen more investments than they did in the whole of 2016
Yesterday we revealed that real estate and accomodation had the biggest increase per vertical in the Nordics so far in 2017 compared to last year, already recording 7 more investments than they did in the whole of 2016. But what’s driving this increase?In order to get a better understanding of this we looked at each Nordic PropTech company that has raised money in 2017 and discovered three common themes.
The increase in investments into Nordic PropTech is driven by 3 main areas of interest

This Week in The Nordics

 Denmark

Planday took in a strategic investment from German company METRO

Cleaning platform Happy Helper has raised 3.5MDKK

Digital Revisor has raised 3.5MDKK

Valuer has raised a round from business angels

Opbeat was acquired by U.S.-based Elastic Search

Conferize went public today on First North

Queue-it expands to the US and hires new VP

Founders launched a playbook for those moving to Copenhagen

Faraday Motion is a 3D-printed skateboard you control with your smartphone


Finland

BetterDoctor raises $11 millionMaaS Global has raised over 10MEURKieku a ‘YouTube for podcasts’ has raised 300,000EURVR startup Varjo comes out of stealth with fundingFILEBOT brings users’ digital security up to military standards

Taxi service Kovanen releases an app


Iceland

NSA Ventures is changing: Highlights from the annual meeting

NSA as a fund of funds, pros and cons & the big picture


Norway

Attensi received investment (53.5MNOK) from Viking Ventures

Norway’s Startup Extreme highlights the best of an ecosystem coming into maturity

Skandiabanken are to open an “entrepreneur bank” in 2018

Trondheim rises as Norway’s sleeping tech giant awakens


Sweden

Swedish inhaler startup Iconovo fetches 2.3MEUR in funding

Lendify raises a further 21MSEK

Innspire has raised 20MSEK

FinTech startup Primepilot has raised 5MSEK more

Music startup Elias has taken in 4MSEK from existing investors

VR startup Fastout raises 1.5MSEK

Energy startup Sally R has raised 1MSEK

Avito’s founders invest in Matsmart

Doctrin has raised more investment from Add Health Media

Edtech startup Ping Pong has been acquired

Klarna obtains full banking licence from Swedish authorities

MINC has a new CEO as does SUP46


Interesting Reads

Startups meets politicians on Bornholm – an interview with Martin Ferro-Thomsen

Proposales wins a prestigious award

Skåne developed self-driving convenience store premiers in Shanghai

CEO of Feedbackly: Mexican companies more open to the cutting edge

Recognising the value of local events for the European technology sector

Former Huddle CEO Alastair Mitchell joins EQT Ventures as partner

Kahoot! released an EdTech trends report 

Business guide for companies looking to establish in Finland

Business Insider went to Nasdaq Stockholm to witness a record-shattering IPO fest – here’s what it was like

Overview of the Nordic SportsTech landscape

A report on the Stockholm-Uppsala Health Tech landscape

The graveyard of European startup blogs

Ikea and Apple are launching an app that lets you virtually try out furniture in your home – and then buy it

‘Sweden is heaven for cloud computing’: Amazon Nordic chief

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— Tom Wehmeier, (VC at Atomico)