Companies

Development Fund's investment: in two stages, totalling EEK 13,411,371

Development Fund's holding: 15%

Brief introduction and ambition: Smartpost focuses on two areas - development, manufacturing and selling of digitally managed parcel terminals and supporting software; offering logistics services in Estonia based on parcel terminals managed over the Internet. The investment is intended to expedite the arrival in international markets of self-servicing parcel terminal technology developed by Smartpost. The company is planning to launch a pilot network of terminals in Estonia in 2008 and offer clients flexible logistics services. In external markets, the company focuses on selling technology (terminal equipment, software, supporting services).

Co-investors: Smartpost Investments OÜ (owned by Arvo Nõges) and Sibo Invest OÜ (owned by Guido Kundla, Martin Petjärv and Ivar Siimar). The holding is 20%; the price of a 1% holding was the same for the Development Fund and co-investors.

See also:

Videos of SmartPOST’s automatic parcel terminals

12.02.2010 SmartPost: The explanation of a success 

26.05.2008 The Development Fund made its first investment

08.01.2009 SmartPOST automatic parcel terminals now across Estonia!

Development Fund's investment: in two stages, totalling EEK 10,000,000

Development Fund's holding: 24.5%

Brief introduction and ambition: Ilmarine Engineering OÜ is a promising company offering sophisticated turn-key engineering design solutions for metal-working and machine-building industries while focusing on export markets (Scandinavia). The investment is intended for the development of the technical product development unit of Ilmarine Engineering OÜ (for recruiting engineers, purchasing design software, licences and certificates, covering product development and international marketing costs, etc), which is needed for designing, developing and selling intricate turn-key metal-working and machine-building solutions in the Scandinavian markets.

Co-investor: Sibo Invest OÜ (owned by Guido Kundla, Martin Petjärv and Ivar Siimar) 24.5%, under the same terms and conditions as the Development Fund.

See also: 

Lesson from restart-up ilmarine how to boost export

06.08.2008 Ilmarine Engineering OÜ received a boost from the Development Fund and Sibo Invest for development activities

17.05.2009 Ilmarine – contemporary appearance, manufacturing stuck in 1975

Development Fund's investment: in two stages, totalling EEK 3,937,500

Development Fund's holding:  21.37%

Brief introduction and ambition: Goliath Wind OÜ develops a new type of cheaper and more efficient wind turbines. Conventional turbines include gearings, which are the weakest link in their construction, and in the case of turbines with direct drives their shortcomings are massive size and material intensity. The company's goal is to reach wind turbines, which are lighter, more durable and with a starting capacity of 1.5 Megawatts, and would give 15-20% cheaper electricity than is currently available for wind turbines. The new technological development is based on an idea developed by Professor Ed Spooner from Durham University and in the team are key persons with an international outreach. The Development Fund's investment objective is to support the testing of the prototype, and starting production in the international markets. According to a technological audit, this is a feasible and commercially viable invention.

Co-investor: PowerDrive OÜ (owner: Mirjam-Mari Marastu). Contribution 21.37% under the same terms and conditions as the Development Fund.

See also:

Goliath blogi

Goliath develops wind turbines with half the price

13.01.2009 The Development Fund invests in sustainable energy

10.02.2009 Estonian Company Develops an Enhanced Wind Power Generator

Goliath Wind visualisation

Development Fund's investment: in two stages, totalling EEK 4,850,446

Brief introduction and ambition: Massi Miliano OÜ develops a novel solution based on a robot for online shopping. As garments cannot be tried on before purchasing in online stores, the customer is entitled to send the good back to the shop and the shop pays the full price and postage. In the case of Massi Miliano's developed solution, the customer will be shown a photo from the garment which is worn by the mannequin who is the same size as the customer. Since on the basis of such photo it is better to evaluate the personal suitability of the garment, the amount of returns thereby decrease, customers dare to buy more expensive goods and ultimately the efficiency of the online shop increases. A patent application has been submitted to protect the base technology which enables the solution, a computer controlled shape-changing robotic mannequin.

The objective of the company is to become the service provider for leading international online garment shops and to open the starting technology potential also for other business applications. The idea to harness the robotic mannequin in the online fashion industry originated from Heikki Haldre, the head of Massi Miliano and the founder of  Netikuller.ee. The robot itself was developed by Alvo Aabloo, Professor of Polymer Materials Technology at the Institute of Technology, University of Tartu, and Maarja Kruusmaa, Professor at the Centre for Biorobotics, Tallinn University of Technology. The Development Fund's investment objective is to finance launching the international online, further international sales development and solutions improvement.

Co-investors: Webmedia AS, Aavik ja Partnerid Advokaadibüroo OÜ, Bread and Butter OÜ, Krastendo OÜ, Kamm Ettevõtmiste OÜ, the price of a 1% holding was the same for the Development Fund and co-investors.

See also:

Vogue.com: Fashion Robot

Fits.me - CNBC's Top 20 breakout brand for 2011

The Next Women: Meet iron lady of Fits.me team Maarja Kruusmaa. 

Nytimes.com: Afraid the Clothes You Buy Online Won't Fit? Get Help From a Robotic Mannequin

Fits.me in FT.com: Small country, big on enterprise

01.06.2009 The Development Fund to invest into Massi Miliano, the integrator of robotics and online clothing retailing

Why did they appeal to Estonian Development Fund for a VC investment?

Development Fund's investment: in three stages, totalling EEK 3,750,000

Brief introduction and ambition: United Dogs and Cats OÜ is a developer of a pet owners communication portal www.uniteddogs.com and www.unitedcats.com, whose business model is agressive growth on the export market. During the current two year existence, the company has launched the service in 16 languages. The number of users for the portals are in leading position in Italy, Spain, France, Lithuania and Estonia. The number of users is growing by around ten thousand every month. The aim of the company is to become the world leading network for dog and cat owners. The head of the company Ragnar Sass has previous experience in media and web  companies. The Development Fund's investment objective is to finance further international sales development and the launch of new service areas.

Co-investors: Kakssada Kakskümmend Volti OÜ (Raivo Hein's investment company that launched the internet businesses www.cvkeskus.ee, www.kv.ee and www.osta.ee). In the same round, the initial investor in the company, Ambient Sound Investments OÜ, also invested. The price of a 1% holding was the same for the Development Fund and co-investors.

See also:

Makers of Uniteddogs and Unitedcats received €480,000 of VC funding

Why did they appeal to Estonian Development Fund for a VC investment?

United Dogs and Cats rock in Latin-America

In addition to Estonian business plans, around 5% of the projects submitted in the last twelve months were from other countries, where entrepreneurs are searching for additional capital injections from around the world due to the restricted number of offers.
The majority of projects submitted as investment proposals were connected to various ICT (information and communication technology) applications. There were also a significant number of ideas associated with electronics, biotechnology and the production of alternative energy.

Most of the projects did not meet the Development Fund's investment strategy criteria as they were not suitable for venture capital investment.

More than half projects analysed over last two years were those in which the fund would be unable to invest at all due to the principles of venture capital investment. Development Fund is searching for the projects with clear competitive possibility, with aim at rapid international growth or unique market edge. The planned field of operations should not be in areas within traditional branches of the economy and involve business models in which venture capital could not be invested with the expectation of high returns.

Just tenth of the projects submitted were sufficiently mature, based on the principles of venture capital investment, for negotiations to be launched.There were also projects for which business angels or private sector venture capitalists were offering more favourable investment conditions, in which case there was no reason for the Development Fund to compete with private capital

As of August 2010 the Development Fund's investment portfolio included 7 innovative companies, each of which has a business model which focuses on international growth.

Several other projects are in the stage of additional analysis and negotiations, while the SeedBooster incubator is developing 5-6 projects.

The Development Fund is actively involved in the management of its portfolio companies at the supervisory board level, advising them through strategic development and operative management. Venture capital investors, who are more than just providers of money, help the companies identify the direction they should be taking, raise resources and build up sales and communications networks which support their operations. The Development Fund has 1-2 members on the supervisory boards of every company in which it invests.

The co-investor who invested in the company on the same terms as the Development Fund contributes to it's development in the same way. The working meetings of the supervisory boards are held periodically, monthly or weekly depending on the development phase of the firm and the tasks that need to be completed.

• a virtual library of 3D drawings;
• an ordering environment for 3D drawings; and
• a supply environment in which orders can be submitted on the basis of 3D drawings for the production of parts.

GrabCAD is being developed Hardi Meybaum and Indrek Narusk who graduated from Tallinn Technical University in product development. Meybaum has worked as an engineer and has managed a number of software development units. Narusk has worked as an engineer in a variety of machine construction companies for more than seven years. The idea of launching an online environment came to the founders of the company in the course of their everyday work.

The network version currently has an ordering environment for 3D drawings, while development of the virtual library is ongoing. The company's business model was analysed in SeedBooster in order to launch it on the international market.

Co-investor with Development Fund to CrabCAD is AstrecBaltic, owner of Motors24.ee.

• GrabCAD won Seedcamp, the most important European startup contest 
• TechCrunch GrabCAD secured funding for it's open source 3D library and CAD marketplace

Business idea: This project aims to develop a new pathogen-specific medical diagnostic test for domestic use. The technological shortcomings of diagnostics equipment to date have made it impossible for people to obtain early, reliable and anonymous information about whether they have contracted infectious illnesses (such as STDs). SelfDiagnostics resolves this problem using a new technological method and the help of leading researchers. Entrepreneur Marko Lehes leads a team which includes development director Indrek Tulp, a doctoral student from the University of Tartu with a background in international partnerships, and the neurochemistry research teams of Professor Ülo Langel (who was awarded the 2009 Estonian Science Prize) from Stockholm University and the Institute of Technology of the University of Tartu.

SelfDiagnostics has been included in SeedBooster because it is dealing with an issue whose resolution will help to achieve very attractive business and socio-economic objectives all over the world.

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Business idea: Sportlyzer is a sports website designed for athletic people whose user value lies in three main services:
▪ a social environment in which to exchange training information with friends and acquaintances;
▪ intelligent software which analyses a user's background and level of training activity and then produces or amends their training schedule on the basis of the information obtained; and
▪ motivational software which influences the desire of users to exercise regularly by employing a range of psychological means based on information obtained from their analyses.

In order to boost the number of users, the social network and motivational software can be used free of charge. Income is planned to be generated from monthly fees for use of the intelligent training software and from advertising. The development team comprises Tõnis Saag (director of the sports medicine centre Vomax) and the development team from the IT firm Nagi, led by Jüri Kaljundi.

Sportlyzer has been included in SeedBooster because the company has plans to aggressively enter the international market and would like to prepare itself to raise additional capital.

• HEI: Sportlyzer helps ordinary people stick to exercise plan

Business idea: BiotaP focuses on development and production of high troughput metagenomic data based test systems for analysing various microorganism communities. The method enables also better analysis of the environment. BiotaP OÜ was founded in 2007 by Estonian biotechnology companies Genomictoolbox OÜ and Bioinf OÜ.
Microorganisms represent 2/3 of life and contain vast biological diversity that is the product of an estimated 3.8 billion years of evolution. In many environments, as many as 99% of the microorganisms cannot be cultured by standard techniques, and the uncultured fraction includes diverse organisms that are only distantly related to the cultured ones. Therefore, culture-independent methods, like metagenomics, are essential to understand the genetic diversity, population structure, and ecological roles of the majority of microorganisms. Metagenomics has potential to answer fundamental questions in microbial ecology.

 The main services of Biotap are:
• Custom-development, design and production of PCR-based environmental monitoring test kits;
• Customized environmental diagnostics service based on high throughput sequencing methodology;
• Technology license sales for production of test kits for specific environment- geographical location combinations.

These services enables quickly and simply evalue ’health’  and changes of the environment, based on the amount of specific micro-organisms for instance in dirt, clean water, air, food etc.
BiotaP is the first company in Europe developing metagenomic test systems.

IEstonian Development Fund and co-investor Bellus have invested 240 000€ to Realyes OÜ.

Realeyes collects eye movement data to provide practical insights into the mind of the consumer.

Eye-tracking goes beyond click-throughs and mouse-movements to reveal user interaction in its entirety. Unlike traditional surveys and interviews eye-tracking is completely objective - It's simply the best way to measure and analyze consumer response.

Realeyes helps clients improve ad performance and optimize web design - 2/3 of our work is from happy repeat customers including Fortune 500 brands, leading publishers and research agencies.

For additional information please contact: 
mihkel[A]realeyesit.com, Mihkel Jäätma, Realeyes OÜ, +44 774 880 9671
andrus.oks[A]arengufond.ee, Andrus Oks, Investment expert, mob +372 5087123 

• The all-telling eye (The Economist 22.10.2011)
• UK firm pioneering new facial recognition advertisements(DW 12.12.2011)
• Human Lie Detector Paul Ekman Decodes The Faces (Fast Company, 14.12.2011)

Estonian Development Fund and co-investor Sibo Invest OÜ have invested 34 000€ to wind generator developer for small-consumers -  my!Wind.

my!WInd is developing wind generators for small-consumers of electricity. First my!Wind generator is with nominalpower of 5kW, next models will be available with 2kW and 10kW.

Additional information: 

Indrek Kelder, investment expert, tel 616 1083, indrek.kelder[A]arengufond.ee