News April 18, 2024: Froda, Deepgrid, Your Brand Travel, Fondo, LiveDay, New KTH Innovation pre-incubator startups, Lingotion, Hormona, Quandify, GeoGuessr, and more

Here are today's news from Sweden's startup and tech sector, exclusively for you as subscriber of Swedish Tech News PRO.

Mergers & acquisitions

• Gorilla Capital, Finland-headquartered early-stage VC, acquired an unspecified stake in Stockholm-based startup Daymi from an undisclosed existing investor (English). Daymi offers a SaaS operations hub for financial services. The startup was founded in 2017 as Strivr by Carl-Fredrik Svensson and Fabian Lindegren, and has so far raised around SEK15M in funding, according to data registered with Bolagsverket sourced via Eivora, from Almi Invest and angel investors. For 2022, Daymi reported net revenue of SEK3.4M, and a loss of -SEK6.8M.

Funding news

⬜️ publicly traded

• Froda (Stockholm, digital loan provider for small businesses, founded 2015): SEK560M (€48M, $51M) loan guarantee through the European Investment Fund (EIF). This allows Froda to support around 3,500 small businesses and startups in the Nordics with advantageous micro-loans (English). In fall 2023, Froda announced its most recent equity funding round, which amounted to SEK90M.
• Deepgrid (Stockholm, developer and operator of Battery Energy Storage System facilities that act as virtual power plants, founded 2021): SEK4.25M (€360K, $390K) in equity funding, co-founder and CTO Carl-Christian Höeg confirms to me, though he didn't reveal the investor names. This includes the SEK1M which I covered in the "unannounced funding" section on November 2, 2023. Deepgrid has not raised any larger equity funding previously. The valuation was around SEK100M. Additionally, the company secured "substantial debt funding including a green loan”. Deepgrid was founded by Höeg and Christopher Kandimaa. The company currently operates two Battery Energy Storage (BESS) facilities, one in Oskarshamn since 2022 – which according to Höeg likely was Sweden's first commercial stand-alone BESS – and one in Gullspång. That second one is significantly larger and connected directly to the high voltage network. 📊 For 2023 – the company's first year of revenue generation – Deepgrid reports net revenue of SEK840K.
• Your Brand Travel (Örnsköldsvik, SaaS solution for brands to create their own travel portal, founded 2022): SEK300K (€26K, $27K) in first equity funding from Tregion Startup Invest. The startup just signed its first customer, the outdoor brand Isbjörn of Sweden. For now the company focuses on the Nordics, but is already planning for expanding into other large European markets, says co-founder and CEO Tamer Khairy (Swedish, machine translation). ℹ️ Company details added on July 11, 2023 to the early-stage startup tracker page, and to the "new startups" Google Sheet.