Eskimi Hits 5 Million Users, Sees Solid Growth In Africa
Eskimi, the Lithuanian-based mobile social network based on flirting, has announced it recently hit 5 million users, and is growing at 30 000 a day. The service has grown steadily in popularity in Africa, where desktop-based social networks have not meet the needs of every mobile user. Eskimi's largest market is in Nigeria, where the company counts around 2.2 million users. There is also a growing user-base in Ghana, South Africa,Kenya, Namibia, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe, where there are over 250 000 users each. Our last coverage of Eskimi six months ago reported they had 2.5 million users.
Lithuania-Based Outlander Studios Gets Funded By HackFwd
Lithuania-based game developer Outlander Studios has signed a partnership agreement with pre-seed investor HackFwd, securing enough funds and support to commercialize the company’s first game, Equilibrium.
Equilibrium is a 3D real-time strategy game for Android. Players are taken into a medieval fantasy world of Chaos vs. Order in which they have to build and defend their village against the opposing force. Reminiscent of tower defense, Outlander Studios promises that the game mechanics and challenges presented in the game are actually quite unique.
Saying Something Over And Over Again Doesn't Make It So
Om Malik, the founder of GigaOm was speaking in Helsinki to a room of media representatives yesterday morning at the Aalto Venture Garage. His visit to Finland is part of a tour to come understand the companies and environment the local startups work in. Before Helsinki, he had visited Berlin and the LeWeb conference in Paris. I managed to talk to Malik about the way he sees these entrepreneurial hubs.
The big part of our discussion circled around the fact that people in Europe always look up to Silicon Valley and how they succeed in everything they do, while failing to see all the potential in front of their eyes. I have to say, while I knowledge the value Silicon Valley has on companies - I wonder how much possibility is wasted when following a given path without truly thinking of the possibilities closer to you. After all, Rovio didn't go to Silicon Valley to succeed - it all started with an innocent tweet by a Swedish athlete in the Nordics (going international I mean).
BusyFlow: All Your Productivity Apps In A Single Workspace
Most of us use an array of web-based apps and services each day to carry out different tasks, but have you ever wondered how much time and effort is wasted switching from one app to another while working on a single project? Lithuanian startup BusyFlow aims to rectify the situation with a service that integrates all your favorite productivity tools into a single workspace.
Easyprove: Simplifying The Document Approval Process
Getting your documents and proposals approved on time by all relevant stakeholders can be a tedious and nerve-wracking task. Easyprove, a Lithuania-based startup, is developing an online platform that could potentially make the process a whole lot smoother, efficient and carefree.
Mokipay Offers Mobile Payments For Nearly Any Phone
Mobile payments are hot right now, but many services are only offered for certain phones, or certain stores-- like Starbucks' mobile payment app. A Lithuanian startup has a new take on the concept to also reach users who don't have a smartphone. Mokipay uses a sticker with a Near Field Communication (NFC) chip that attaches to the back of a smart or dumb phone, which can be read by a Mokipay reader already present in about 2000 bars, restaurants, and retailers across Lithuania.
Pinevio: A New Look On Content Discovery
Information overload is a big problem online and there are many services that try to solve it: from good old RSS readers to various content discovery platforms like Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon or Reddit to social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook. Two entrepreneurs from Lithuania, Daumantas Dvilinskas and Mindaugas Krisciunas, decided it's time to move content discovery from social to interest graph, making use of all the existing services. That is how Pinevio, a social content discovery platform, was founded a year ago.
In Depth Analysis Into The Daily Deals Market In The Baltics
Update (3.11.2011): We've updated the information regarding Estonia to better reflect the market situation. After analysing a 3rd party data source (Refresh.lv) we realised Zizu's figures were wrong. They are now portrayed correctly in the data below. Please note that we have not changed the overall market situation of the Baltics, even though it would change slightly due to the change in figures from Estonia. Samad Mukhamedov from Zizu Project contacted us and we've discussed this over e-mail. According to their figures, they are number 2 in the Baltics in September, but due to the sheer difference in figures between Cherry's and those of the research site Refresh.lv's we are unable to replicate this. However, we wanted to bring this up as to make the figures as transparent as possible.
This post is a very comprehensive look into the daily deals, group buying market in the Baltics. We've also talked to the market leader, Cherry Media Group about the situation on the market and how they see it develop in the future. Despite being a fairly established trend in the world of e-commerce, the daily deals industry is far from saturated in the Baltics, but we're going to see consolidation among the players in the future. Cherry Media Group is the largest player in the market by far. According to calculations from the company themselves (that are available to the public, based on the deals the companies have sold), they have 49% market share in the Baltic market. Cherry Media Group operates in all three, Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian, markets.
Write A Letter Today To Receive It Tomorrow With Letter2Future
I miss out on knowing what I planned last year. How much of it has been achieved and what hasn’t been? While a personal diary with all records and an online to to list there is nothing like a letter from your own self dated from last year. Letter2Future takes care of that.
The startup hails from Lithuania and is a non-commercial project aimed at helping you send your letter to the future. “Thoughts materialize better on paper” is indeed a wonderful phrase and ensures whatever you thought or planned is available anytime without risk of being forgotten or altered. The startup enables you to compose a letter today, on anything you want write, be it a plan, a promise that you make today or just share with your beloved how much you love them today. Once written you can assign a future date when the letter is to be delivered. Great, there is some more news to make it better.
Yummi Apps Finalising Wizardia
A Lithuanian based social gaming company and developer of such games, Yummi Apps has announced that they are finalising work on their game combining social and mobile features - Wizardia. The game will connect these two mega trends in real-time to create a new gaming experience, according to the company's press release.
Cherry.ee, Beta.lt and Grupinis.lt Announce Merger
Three independent “daily deals” -sites, Cherry.ee, Beta.lt, Grupinis.lt, have today announced a merger to create the largest internet coupon site in the Baltics. The newly created company has over a 50% market share in the region and had a turnover of 0.94 million euro in March 2011. The three companies were all owned by their founders and angel investors. The merger was completed through a stock swap.
We’ve been expecting this sort of activity to take place and it’s great to see companies with similar interests partner to improve customer experience.
Startup Sauna Participants Announced
The Helsinki based Aalto Venture Garage is putting together in international incubation/acceleration program for very early stage projects that should turn to startups later this summer. In total, 17 teams from the region were accepted into the program from around the Baltic Sea. 3 teams were from Russia, 2 from Latvia, 1 from Lithuania and Estonia as well as Sweden and the rest were from Finland (9).
Results From Startup Weekend Lithuania
Weekend events that concentrate on creating a start-up idea and building a prototype are becoming quite popular in Nordics and Baltics. The latest addition to the recently held events is Startup Weekend Lithuania. It was held for the second time in Kaunas and gathered around 200 guests. One of the key organizers, Justinas Katkus, shared with us the event's outcome. Throughout the 54 hours that the event lasted, 17 teams were formed and at the end 6 best projects were chosen.
Mobile-First Social Network Eskimi Reaches 1M Users
Social networks are today's darlings: a lot of us use at least one and many strive to build one of their own around a certain aspect of their lives. Eskimi belongs to the second camp: the company offers a mobile-first social network. Eskimi's main purpose is to help users meet new people. To that end, everything is made simple in the service: creating a profile requires only a username, date of birth, your location and gender. Thus, you are free to chat with other users after 30 seconds of using Eskimi.
You can also share photos and send gifts or private messages. Even though the service works both in a browser and as an app, being mobile-first means Eskimi gets most of its traction from mobile platforms. Most of their users come from the emerging markets like Asia, Africa and Latin America. Founded only a year ago in Lithuania, the service today has 1M registered users who generate over 300M pageviews and 60M messages per month.
GetJar Raises $25 Million In Third Round Of Financing
MobileBeat announced yesterday that GetJar has raised a whopping $25 million in its third round of financing. GetJar's founder and CEO Ilja Laurs is from Lithuania, but the company has been headquartered in the US for many years. This round of financing came from Tiger Global Management and Accel Partners. Accel Partners also led the two previous rounds. With the third round of financing, GetJar has raised in total $42 million.
Lithuanian Originated Pixelmator Grosses $1M In The Mac App Store
An image editing application for the Mac OSX, created by the Lithuanian developers Saulius Dailide and Aidas Dailide, Pixelmator has grossed $1M in sales in the Mac App Store. The application is on sale (currently) for approximately 24€, which means it has sold an amazing, over 40 000 downloads. The application is a relatively light weight alternative to the heavier image editing applications and features a lot of different basic tools for image editing as well as over 15 color correction tools and over 130 different filters.
Interview: Ututi And Lithuanian Startup Scene
Ututi is a start-up from Lithuania that has built an online portal for university students to share course and study materials. Every 10th Lithuanian student uses it and the service's Polish version has attracted plenty of interest too. I interviewed Jaro Šatkevič, one of the founders, who revelaed that the team is now working on an international version of the service - Ututi.com. 'After many talks with universities we realized that they need another Ututi. They wanted to have studies-oriented social networks for university community, i.e. discussions, file sharing between students and teachers, teachers' personal pages etc. That's how new concept of Ututi was started. Official beta version is planned in the end of February' - states Jaro.
Deal24 Is Estonian Groupon
Groupon has sparked up a lot of similar concepts, if not exactly the same, in many local markets as it has not been able to expand as fast as it should have to satisfy the market demand. In Estonia, Deal24 has taken advantage of this and has launched their own version with a similar concept. The service offers one deal a day and there are no limits to how many people have to purchase it for the offer to become valid.
MentoringDay Gathered Lithuanian Startups And Mentors
Last week, Open Coffee Club Vilnius together with partnerships from Sunrise Valley and Knowledge Economy Forum, organised a hectic, but fruitful one day event to get startups together with the top mentors in the country. MentoringDay, pulled together some 12 startups and 50 mentors to speed up business development.
ArcticStartup And AaltoVG Go Baltics!
This is an exciting week for the Nordic startup scene: each country has seen a boom in startup activity during the recent months, so we have decided to organize a road trip together with AaltoVG, in an effort to bring the community closer.
The idea is to meet with the actors of each country, find new and interesting startup stories, potential partners, and friends!
Lithuania Steps Up its Game
Finland and Estonia aren’t the only growing hotbeds for entrepreneurship in the Baltics. Since our coverage a few months ago, the Lithuanian startup community has made very significant progress placing the country on the entrepreneurial map. Here is an overview of these recent developments.
Nordic Tech Tour Kicked Off Presenting The Top Firms In The Region
The Nordic Tech Tour, organized by the independent not-for-profit organization The European Tech Tour has kicked off today. During two and a half days, the selected 30 promising early and later stage growth companies based in Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Iceland, and the Baltic countries will gather together with the leading cross-border venture capital and global corporate firms.
During the event, the companies have twenty minutes to present their business plans to 70 international delegates, consisting of senior partners, VPs, and CEOs from the global venture capital and technology industry, as well as advisors and academics. The investment capital present at the Tour is said to be worth over €10 billion.
GetJar Says Mobile Apps Market Becomes Bigger Than The Internet. We Don't Think So
In an interview with Econsultancy, GetJar CEO Ilja Laurs talked about his vision for apps and how they will take over the internet. We disagree.
GetJar is the world’s second largest mobile app store founded in Lithuania offering over 57,000 apps for all mobile devices and serving over 55m downloads per month. To date they have achieved over 750m downloads and attracted 300,000 registered developers and 50,000 registered beta testers.
In the interview Laurs' says that the battle of the app stores will culminate in a dramatic change to the market over the next 12-18 months, and at least 90% of app stores will fail. Further, the importance of global mobile billing will become critical: Several $10M-a-year mobile app businesses will appear in 2010 as the apps market gathers momentum. The billing processes and agreements will improve in 2011 and 2012, stimulating the app economy and the rise of the $100m app businesses.
Lithuania - Punching Above Its Weight In ICT?
Guest post by Daiva Naravaite, co-founder of AlpinaSearch. AlpinaSearch is a provider of global Search, Selection & On-boarding services for innovative start-ups and their investors.
Who would have believed that the country with the highest mobile subscription rate worldwide (138% as per World Economic Forum's World Competitiveness report), the broadest high-speed mobile broadband coverage and the densest network of public internet access points in Europe is the small nation of Lithuania, sandwiched between Latvia, Belarus, Poland, Kaliningrad and the Baltic sea?
Prompted by comments I heard on numerous occasions (including geeky ArcticStartup and TechCrunch events), and equally inspired by the enthusiastic entrepreneurial community in Lithuania, I thought I’ll share a few facts.
Four Nordic and Baltic Startups to Mobile Peer Awards 2009 Finals
Four Nordic and Baltic Startups were selected to Mobile Peer Awards 2009 Finals in Barcelona by the international virtual Jury from the 42 semi-finalists.
- Fortumo - MobileMonday Estonia
- Portal for setting up free and extremely fast web-based mobile services and monetizing them, offering billing in 11 countries and expanding.
- Getjar Networks - MobileMonday Lithuania
- One of the world’s most popular mobile application distribution and developer communities with over 14 million downloads per month.
- Mobintech - MobileMonday Copenhagen
- Offers small digital display glasses, through which the small screen of mobile phones will be transformed into an experience similar to viewing a 30” flat screen TV.
- PopCatcher - MobileMonday Sweden
- Provides technology and products for stripping out talk and commercials from recorded radio music into plain music MP3's.
The firms will be presenting their final pitch in Barcelona on February 16th.
(See the full list of the 20 selected companies on Mobile Peer Awards web page.)
Congrats all four!
MobileMonday Peer Awards Semifinalists Chosen
MobileMonday Peer Awards 2009 mobile innovation contest semifinalists have been chosen. From the Nordic and Baltic area, the following firms were selected by their MoMo chapters.
- Fortumo - MobileMonday Estonia
- Getjar Networks - MobileMonday Lithuania
- Mobintech A/S - MobileMonday Copenhagen
- Wapalta - MobileMonday St. Petersburg
One might ask, however, where are the Finnish, Swedish, and Norwegian participants?! There were some interesting startups applying in of those chapters as well, but none are on the semifinalist list (at least on Monday evening) - the chapters didn't select anyone? Either way, it is good to see the newly-launched Estonian MoMo chapter sent their nominee this year (last year the Helsinki chapter chose Estonian Fromdistance).
Nevertheless, as explained before, there will next be a further selection round by an international virtual jury to select the 20 finalists to the February 16th Barcelona MobileMonday event. Anybody from our readers in the jury?
Microsoft Launches Tools For Startups - BizSpark
Last Friday, Microsoft launched a new program called Bizspark that offers startups of different ages and stages tools to take care of their software and hosting requirements. Technopolis Ventures, Veraventure, The Finnish Software Entrepeneurs Association and Venture Cup has partnered with Microsoft in Finland to accept participants into the program.
Startups must meet the following requirements to be accepted into the program:
- Be actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that will form a core of its current or intended business
- Be privately held
- Be in business for less than 3 years and
- Have less than 1 million USD annual turnover.
Despite being a Mac fanatic, I have to give it to Microsoft for pulling this off. They are sponsoring a wide range of products that suit many companies working in the internet space especially. Also, the packages being offered are tailored for companies in different stages of their growth and thus are also bundled together with their capability to pay for the software.
For more information, visit Microsoft Bizspark. You can also find your partners in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and the Baltics through this link.
