Chinese software company Thunder Software Technology Co (ThunderSoft) acquires MM Solutions AD – Bulgarian mobile image software provider, in a deal for 31 million euros.

MM Solutions develops imaging for mobile phones, the Internet of Things and automobiles and is a leading European developer of state-of-the-art mobile and industrial graphics imaging technology with 16 years advanced image processing algorithm development, optimization and integration capabilities. Over the years, the company has provided software for over 60 models of mobile devices from Samsung, LG, Sony, and Huawei.

ThunderSoft is planning to launch auto-smart integrated systems and the merger would strengthen the company’s technical and R&D capabilities to enhance its global market competitiveness in the visual and artificial intelligence fields.

Thunder Software Technology Co., Ltd. is a provider of mobile intelligent terminal operating system platforms and platform technologies. Its products and services are used in IoT intelligent terminals, such as smartphones, intelligent vehicle systems and intelligent hardware, among others. The Company operates businesses in China, Europe, America, and Japan.

ThunderSoft said the deal would strengthen its capabilities in sectors such as image technologies research and development as well as its endeavors in the artificial intelligence area.

The EBAN Annual Congress is one of Europe’s largest and most international Business Angel events. The event also hosts the EBAN General Assembly, held annually by EBAN, members, and partners. This year’s event is the 18th in a raw and will be held in Sofia on 25-27 June 2018.

The European Trade Association for Business Angels, Seed Funds, and Early Stage Market Players – EBAN, is the pan-European representative for the early stage investor gathering over 150 member organizations more than 50 countries today. Established in 1999 by a group of pioneer angel networks in Europe with the collaboration of the European Commission, EBAN invests 7.5 billion euros a year and plays a vital role in the funding of SMEs across Europe. EBAN fuels Europe’s growth through the creation of wealth and jobs.

Among the members of the Association are business angels, venture capitals and accelerators, electronic funding platforms, associate and other early stage market players. In its 18 years of presence, EBAN is setting professional standards, provides training and certification, benchmarking, research, networking, and lobbying, as well as cross-border syndication and co-investment support.

Please follow the link for videos from EBAN’s past events across Europe and coming soon updates on the venue and the programme of the Congress.

The Belgium-based electronic components producer Melexis plans to double its production capacity in Sofia, where the largest manufacturing facility of the company is currently located. Over the next five years, Melexis will invest 75 million euro to significantly extend its R&D activities, as well as its warehousing facilities, adding additional 15.000 sqm to its existing 7.500 sqm facilities in Sofia. Melexis’ Sofia-based workforce is expected to reach nearly 600 employees by the end of 2018, and the total will grow by another 160 people till 2020.

The investment in Sofia is part of the expansion of Melexis in strategic European locations to help the company meet growth plans in logistics, manufacturing and R&D activities that will bring additional capacity to meet the growing demand for the services and solutions that the company designs, manufactures and renders in the automotive microelectronic sector.

We’ve managed to reach an important milestone in our project, reaffirming the intentions we have been pursuing together over the last 3 years. We have faced difficult moments that we managed to successfully overcome, thanks to the support we received from you. Thank you for this!, says Sylvain Collot, Manager of Melexis Bulgaria, in his letter to Sofia Municipality and Sofia Investment Agency.

According to the latest analysis prepared by Cushman & Wakefield, investment volumes in a commercial real estate in Central and Eastern Europe reached nearly €13 billion in 2017. All CEE countries grew at a similar rate with Poland growing most rapidly at 9% y-o-y. Foreign investors from North America, Asia, and South Africa dominate the market, followed by German and Austrian buyers.

2017 was marked by two trends – limited product and high demand in the core segment and subdued appetite for secondary and tertiary assets. Commercial real estate investment activity in CEE reached €5 billion in Poland, €3.3 billion in the Czech Republic, €1.8 billion in Hungary, €1 billion in Romania, €876 million in Bulgaria and €470 million in Slovakia. The retail sector outperformed nearly €1.9 billion worth of investments, followed by approximately €1.4 billion in the office sector. The warehouse market accounted for almost €900 million, while approximately €850m was invested in both the hospitality and mixed-use sectors each. Hotels became a relevant investment product with investment volumes amounting to €862 million and this sector is set to attract increasing investor interest. In Bulgaria, demand growth remained firm in the office and retail sectors but eased slightly for industrial space.

2018 is expected to be another good year for the commercial real estate investment market with most active inflows from the US, Canada, South Africa. Q1 2018 is likely to exceed €3 billion.

Falcon.io, the The New York- and Copenhagen-headquartered leading social media and customer experience SaaS platform, announced its acquisition of the Bulgarian social media platform Komfo. The acquisition of Komfo consolidates Falcon.io’s position as the European market leader. The company enables its clients to explore the full potential of digital marketing by managing multiple customer touchpoints from one platform. Falcon.io’s diverse and global client portfolio includes Carlsberg, Toyota, William Grant & Sons, Momondo, Panasonic, Coca-Cola, and many more. The official statement of the company says that Komfo’s social advertising and analytics capabilities will strengthen the Falcon platform with even better services for social media listening, engaging, publishing, measuring and managing customer data.

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Takeaway.com, the leading online food delivery marketplace in Continental Europe, acquires BGmenu in Bulgaria and Oliviera in Romania for  €10.5 million. Takeaway.com already owns the largest food delivery brands in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Belgium, and Austria. Recently, the company started in Vietnam and currently partners with more than 31 000 food chains and restaurants. To further accelerate growth, Takeaway.com will significantly invest in both Bulgaria and Romania.

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LINK Mobility Group ASA (“LINK”), Europe’s leading and fastest growing provider of B2C mobile messaging and mobile services, acquires the South-Eastern European mobile messaging activities currently owned by Allterco JSCo (“ALLTERCO”). The agreed enterprise value of the transaction is EUR 8.8 million. Under the deal, Allterco is selling to Norway’s LINK all its telecommunication companies in Europe – TERA COMMUNICATIONS AD, TERAVOICE EAD, ALLTERPAY EOOD, TERACOMM RO SRL (Romania), TERA COMMUNICATIONS DOOEL (Macedonia). With the investment from the acquisition, Allterco will focus on the development of IoT devices and services delivered by its wholly-owned subsidiary Allterco Robotics. Allterco Robotics was founded in 2015 and develops Internet of Things products under two brands – MyKi – kids smartwatches and pets trackers and Shelly – smart home controllers. Allterco is listed and publicly traded on the Bulgarian Stock Exchange.

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A decision on whether the American Academy of Blockchain will acquire SoftUni – the largest private software university in Bulgaria, will be announced soon. At the beginning of the year, Academy School of Blockchain, the world’s first accredited school for blockchain education and development signed a strategic partnership with SoftUni for block trainings around the world. The first one will take place in Vietnam. Founded in 2013, SoftUni is the largest private school in Europe and Eastern Europe’s leading

Bulgarian venture capital fund Eleven announced Eleven 2.0 – the Founders Fund – a EUR 6 million entirely private investment fund to support local early-stage companies. The fund is supported by entrepreneurs and managers of large technological and traditional industries companies from Bulgaria and the USA.

In the next 3 years, Eleven 2.0 will invest in about 20 companies with pre-seed ticket sizes starting from EUR 100,000. In exchange, the fund will take 10 to 12 % of the stakes in the company. Depending on their development and need, the fund potentially could invest up to 200.000 EUR. The focus will be on startups that use technology to implement improvements across industries, especially for b2b products and services.

After five years experience on the startup scene in the region and investment rounds of total worth 12 million EUR, the managing partners of Eleven now believe that the model of working with group companies is no longer adequate for the environment. Entrepreneurs have different needs at different times, so in the second Eleven we will build an individual development plan for each startup, says Daniel Tomov, a partner at Eleven. So, instead of one-size-fits-all acceleration model, Eleven 2.0 will now provide every startup with different resources and knowledge tailored to the needs of companies at a different phase, depending on industry, team, progress and other factors.

Mentorship and partnership will be again included in the new program, through Eleven’s extensive network of 500+ alumni and mentors, and in partnerships with GAN and EBAN.

What changes now is that young companies will now develop under one roof. This will provide them with access to additional services such as marketing, sales, legal and strategic assistance. The time-frame at which the companies can spend under the wing of the fund will not be limited and they can stay within the fund until they find their next investor, says Vassil Terziev, managing partner at the fund.

Eleven was founded in 2012 with the portfolio provided by JEREMIE (Joint European Resources for Micro to Medium Enterprises) – a joint initiative launched by the European Commission and the European Investment Bank. Up to now Eleven has invested in more than 150 companies from South Eastern Europe and stands among the top 5 most active early stage investors in Europe.

Should you be interested to become part of the Eleven 2.0 project, learn more about

Sofia Startup Expo 2018, 13-14 March 2018

Sofia Startup Expo 2018 will gather startups and entrepreneurs who will present their latest innovative products, technologies and services.

The SSE will be held on 13-14 March 2018, at “Sofia Tech Park”, “John Atanasov” hall and will cover all stakeholders and stages being part of a new business – startup companies, management, government agencies, incubators, investors, venture capital funds, banks, students’ ideas and technology companies from all over the world.

Exhibitors from the field of the information and communication technologies, education, construction, energy, transport, ecology, the agro-food industry, agriculture, health, financial services, and other spheres are expected to take part in the exhibition. The event will be attended by leaders, experienced entrepreneurs, investors, as well as key visionaries and futurists.

One-day conference session, interactive seminars, technical hackathon and an award ceremony for innovations are part of the programme.

Website: https://sofiastartupexpo.eu/bg/

TCI Global Conference, 20 March 2018

Every year, TCI organizes its flagship event, the TCI Global Conference in an outstanding city/region gathering between 300 and 500 participants. TCI has chosen Sofia, Bulgaria as the location and host for its European Conference in 2018. As a Regional Conference of TCI, it will support the reinforcement of TCI in Europe by promoting closer ties among cluster practitioners in the region as well as by facilitating an open exchange of experiences, results, and methodologies.

The Conference is open to both, TCI members and non-members.

TCI Network is the leading global network of main organizations and practitioners with deep expertise in clusters.  Through its activities, TCI reaches out to 9,000 practitioners from development agencies, government departments, cluster organisations, academic institutions, companies and multilateral organizations in over 110 countries.

Programme, speakers and registration form are available on the website of the organizers.

Employer Branding Best Practices, 30 March 2018

Employer Branding Best Practices is the fifth of a series of events on Employer Branding in Bulgaria. The idea of this year’s event is to share with the audience the best practices of some of the largest companies in the world. Their representatives will share which techniques have managed to radically change the workflow and which have helped them improve their image to the world.

Main topics:

• Steps for creating a successful strategy to attract and retain talentKey Employer Brand attributes that attract and retain talent
• Benchmarking of good practices
• How to identify and meet the

A Bulgarian team launched a demo version of a fully integrated multi-component platform for the needs of scientific research in the field of Life Sciences. The platform is called Bioseek.eu and works through a qualitatively new type of semantic search algorithm that has been developed for more than a year by the team of Bioseek. The search engine is designed for scientists and doctors who work on the development of new treatments and works with a graphical database, research visualization tools, a publishing module, etc.

The work of the team starts with the development of a search algorithm for fashion, which, in addition to product category, also filters attributes such as color, brand, price class, discount, etc. In the course of work, the team finds out that the true value of the development is not the fashion platform, but the semantic search algorithm itself, as it is applicable to every industry. That is why they switched their business to biotechnology research and development.

The number of consumers in biotechnology is relatively small and the business is very niche, but industries with enormous capital stay behind it, as research related to biotechnology is tied to industries such as cosmetics, drug development, dyes, pesticides, etc. The platform creators believe that their product will bring optimization of drug development costs. The average cost of developing a drug is now nearly USD 3 billion.

The platform will serve all workflows in a scientific development – from exploratory search to publishing science research results. Bioseek.eu algorithm can link specific genes and diseases, as well as link several different diseases. The platform even has a dedicated online store, a linked library with plenty of scientific works and useful links and other functionalities that are helpful to the workflow.

The development was funded by a previous successful start-up and recently it won an investment from ImVenture I, as well as mentoring and funding from Enterprise Google Services.

You can find a five-minute presentation of Bioseek here.

Find more about the company’s plans for next year, and why Rosen Genchev, founder and CEO of BioSeek, describes it as something between Facebook and Google in his interview for the UpDate show on Bloomberg TV here.

The share of the automotive sector in Bulgaria in gross value added is 3.6% and has increased over the last 10 years more than 4 times, shows the second Research of the automotive industry in Bulgaria, jointly conducted by Automotive Cluster Bulgaria, Colliers and PwC. The automotive companies are now more than 130 and employ more than 37,000 people.

Main highlights of the report

• 70% of the investors expect growth of revenue in 2018
• 55% of the employers in the automotive sector consider an increase in the number of employees
• 68% of the automotive companies have plans to increase investments in equipment
• Investors show willingness for expansion of their companies not only within their current location (53%), but also in other locations in Bulgaria (32%).
• Over 10% of the companies, participated in the survey, own more than one plant on the territory of the country and over 80% plan to expand further.
• The total revenue generated by the automotive industry in 2016 was close to € 2.5 billion
• Over 50% of the companies have more than 250 employees and one-third of them – over 1000.

Automotive companies are located in all regions of the country, with a higher concentration in Southern Bulgaria. The companies operating on the territory of Bulgaria, produce components for well-known international automotive brands – 90% of all airbag sensors for European manufacturers are produced in our country and that Bulgaria produces components for all the world’s largest manufacturers, including Tesla. To further strengthen growth, companies’ managers plan to invest in development and implementation of new projects/products leading to technological innovations. Currently, over 40% of the companies, which took part in the survey, perform research & development (R&D) activities, related to system and application software development, automation of manufacturing, reduction of the weight of manufactured components for decreasing the levels of emissions in the automotive industry and others, in addition to production. Positive examples of R&D centers in Bulgaria are the American “Visteon” and “Sensata Technologies”, as well as the German „Behr-Hella Thermocontrol“ (BHTC).

Automotive companies plan to establish direct liason between business and university career centers, as well as setting up dual education classes, supporting the automotive business. The main challenges for the automotive industry, according to respondents, are bureaucracy, infrastructure, the legal system and the imbalance between demand and supply on the labor market.

Full results from the survey, forecasts, and interviews with leading companies’

YFU Denmark (Youth For Understanding) is offering a three-week summer camp programme – Be an entrepreneur the Danish way!. Just like YFU’s one-year student exchange programmes, the entrepreneurship summer camp offers a unique opportunity for young Bulgarians to get to know Denmark from up close. The programme aims to strengthen Danish-Bulgarian cultural relations.