The Czech Republic is known for its solid infrastructure, a highly educated and skilled workforce, and relatively low living costs and wages. It’s location means it acts as a ‘gateway’ to other hubs like Berlin and Vienna, there is a strong presence of innovation hubs, incubators and accelerators (think Startup Yard), and support and advice is available from Czech Startups. What’s more, a whole host of big corporates have set up shop here, such as Microsooft, ebay and Skype.
This week, we took a close look at the Czech startup scene and created a list of 10 promising startups to watch in 2020. All of the companies we’re listing below were founded within the past few years, show promising activity either in terms of funding or developments, and all of them have an interesting as well as promising business model.
Spendee – Spendee (founded in 2017), is an app that 
helps users get their money its shape. The Prague-based team has created its tool to provide users with automatic insights on income and spending, shown as informative and easy-to-read infographics. It’s last round of funding was came from the Google Developers Launchpad Accelerator in 2018, and in 2019 they won the ‘Best Fintech Startup’ in the 6th Central European Startup Awards.
Supernova Studio – Supernova, founded in 2018, is designing the world’s first ‘design to code’ platform. Itd tools accelerate workflow for designers and developers by converting any mobile design from Sketch or Adobe XD into fully-fledged native applications for iOS, Android, React Native and Flutter – making it possible to build, prototype, and deploy apps within minutes. They ended the year on a high note by partnering with Google and announcing a new cloud-based solution to release later this year.
Smartguide – Smartguide (founded in 2017), aims to turn every phone into a private guide with Augmented Reality. SmartGuide is a live guide, guiding visitors around and talking to them automatically when they reach an interesting spot. It employs gamification techniques to make content more engaging and bring it to life with audio narration and AR. Tourist attractions can digitalise their content and professional guides can share their knowledge with more travellers to create a passive income. The startup closed its Series B funding in March 2019.
easyBNB – easyBNB (founded in 2016), is a hospitality startup that manages apartments on short term rental platforms such as Airbnb, Booking.com, HomeAway, TripAdvisor, Expedia and 25 other channels. It makes the rental process easy for landlords, handling everything: property listing, photos, reservation, price, 24/7 guest communication in multiple languages, check-in/out, cleaning and laundry. The Prague-based team expanded to Greece and Spain in 2018, and France in 2019.
MapTiler – Maptiler (founded in 2017) is open source software for building digital maps which you can customize, integrate or redistribute with clients products. It allows users to upload any image or geo-data, and get a tiled map which can be uploaded to MapTiler Cloud. Customers already include major players like NASA, BBC and Siemens.
Rossum – Rossum (founded in 2017) is a deep learning startup on a mission to finally get rid of manual data entry once and for all. Its AI tool has been proven to extract data 6 times faster than a human rate while saving companies up to 80% of the cost. It is used by companies globally and Fortune 500 companies, like Bloomberg, Siemens and EY, IBM.
Wereldo – Wereldo (founded in 2018) aims to revolutionize logistics by making it easier, faster, and more cost-efficient to move goods from point A to point B anywhere in the world – via container ships, planes, trucks, and trains. By radically automating processes and designing a superior user experience, it makes buying and selling goods anywhere on the globe more efficient and easier than ever before. With a monthly service fee, customers can benefit from Wereldo’s offering on a rolling basis. The startup closed its last round of funding just this year of €400K.
Neuron Soundware – Neuron Soundware (founded in 2016), detects machine problems using sound. It records audio data via sensors and automatically evaluates failures or abnormal behaviors of machines, as well as preventing breakdowns. The Prague-based team closed its last funding of over €5 million in July 2019, and won the ‘Central European Startup Awards’, as well as coming out top in the ‘Best IoT Startup’ category.
DAVINCI Travel System – DAVINCI travel system is a B2B online platform for booking and management of group reservations at hotels. Its tools automate online group bookings, and provide its clients with wholesale rates as well as cater to individual client needs. The Prague-based team raised its first funding in 2019 of €2.1 million.
Smartlook – Smartlook (founded in 2016) allows businesses to see their website, through their customers eyes. Its qualitative analytics solution helps over 200,000 businesses of all sizes and industries answer the ‘whys’ such as why they don’t use a particular feature, or why they drop off the website at certain points. Its 24/7 visitor recordings show heatmaps with mass data about where most people click and scroll. The startup has a team of 30+ people and raised its last funding in 2019.
By the way: If you’re a corporate or investor looking for exciting startups in a specific market for a potential investment or acquisition, check out our Startup Sourcing Service!
via https://www.AiUpNow.com/ by contact@bcurdy.com, Khareem Sudlow
