Top 10 Best Unicorns In Romania

Top 10 Unicorns In Romania

Unicorns: All over the world, people are aware of the smart and creative nature of Romanians. As Romania‘s tech startups and other industries grow, they attract the attention of well-known investors and entrepreneurs. Some of them buy Romanian companies after seeing what they can do.

Several tech giants have acquired Romanian companies in the past decade, resulting in some exciting exits. To draw the attention of others, we decided to write a piece on the most memorable ones, focusing on their specificities, including their negotiating methods, intellectual property, teamwork, etc. So, take a look, and please remember to return to this article often. We will update the list often!

1. Questo

You can play the mission-like game in more than 30 towns and cities in Europe as “Questo,” a real-world city exploration game.

While exploring new places, you find their hidden stories when you solve clues and riddles. All of these are part of a ‘quest,’ which is an adventure-oriented tour in which you are the protagonist of a fictional story.

During your travels or city visit, you can use the quests to explore hidden gems and must-see attractions.

Booking.com also announced the app, in 2018, for making a major positive impact on society by naming it Best Travel App at the eTravel Awards 2017.

Users are turned into explorers who solve riddles and follow clues to learn about new places and their less-known stories through Questo, an alternative to tourist walks or guided tours of the city.

A holiday usually involves sightseeing. Itineraries are set for some guests, while others wander around a new city, looking for the familiar places everyone is talking about. The stories of those places are known, but few people have fun learning about them. Travelers can find information about tourist attractions through real-world games on Questo’s Romanian travel app.

Almost two years ago, two Romanian entrepreneurs launched Questo, a game combining city exploration with casual gaming. Players travel the world exploring new locations, solving puzzles, and following clues to find secret stories.

After the launch, money also came from branded projects. In the beginning, the two Romanians invested about EUR 100,000. 

When Booking.com’s app won the Booster Labs competition in 2018, they were given a grant of EUR 20,000. As of this year, Questo has raised more than USD 1.5 million in investment from two private angel investors.

Alex created an app like this after finding a hidden pizzeria in Rome away from the busy places tourists can find the pizzas were made by locals. While creating the app, Alex and Claudiu began thinking about how to help users find secret gems while having fun. The first quest was “Seven Towers of Sibiu,” which explores the most important fortifications in this beautiful city in Transylvania.

Over 100 quests are available in 40 cities in Europe, but the developers are looking to expand beyond the borders of Europe. Local content creators create most of the quests, which is interesting. 

They are recruited by some, while others give to create quest missions based on the app. A person’s experience will determine how long the process takes.

The Questo mission has been completed by nearly 35,000 people, walking more than 100.000 kilometers to find popular and hidden locations along with stories from their hometowns. Others exposed Rotterdam spies, found the haunted Rome, or were wizards in London, while others tried to find old town treasures or a haunted side of Bucharest.

Quests are available for buy inside the app, which is available on Google Play and the App Store, in addition on TripAdvisor, GetYourGuide, and in the offer given by travel agents and other related partners. For example, the Alba Iulia Smart City project has partnered with Questo, and its creators are currently in discussions with many travel agencies in Europe, Asia, and South America. Questo has also worked with brands like Samsung or Bitdefender, tourism agencies, and other businesses to make unique quests.

The Questo team believes much better things are ahead from 2019 after a year marked by rapid growth and outcomes that surpassed those of the Romanian business owners. According to the managers of Questo, “2019 will be the year of expansion; we want to boost both the content and the number of users by entering the most major markets in Europe, in addition a few places outside Europe.”

When asked how they accounted for their success, they responded, “We think we have filled a market need that even customers weren’t aware of. But you’d better check back with us in three years.

Company overview

2. GECAD ePayment

Romanian businessman Radu Georgescu has transferred 83 percent of his shares in Gecad ePayment to Africa-based media group Naspers. In Romania, Naspers has bought the Autovit.ro website for the second time.

The recent deal’s value has not been disclosed. Radu Georgescu will remain as a board director after the agreement.

Radu Georgescu sold the third company he founded after a share package in Axigen to a group of investors in 2007 and Antivirus RAV to Microsoft in 2003.

We are more focused on investing in early-stage projects, which is what we are interested in,” Gecad’s founding partner Radu Georgescu said in a statement. “Gecad Ventures is a natural step in the journey we began as an investment fund. Our investment interests and focus on early-stage projects remain  intact.”

Gecad Ventures will donate in promising, innovative, and subject-matter-revolutionizing companies. In addition, the investment will focus on security, FinTech, cloud, e-commerce, and wearable technologies, Georgescu added.

Gecad began in 1992 and acquired RAV antivirus technology from Microsoft in 2003 when it was developed in 1994.

A stake in MIH Allegro, a division of Naspers Group, was acquired by Gecad in 2010 following the launch of Gecad ePayment, an e-commerce company.

Avangate, sold by American private funding firm Francisco Partners in 2013 to a firm owned by Gecad, was first created in 2005 by Gecad.

Over the last few years, this group has funded in several IT startups in Romania, including Gluru, Vector Watch, Sympho Pay, PawSquad, Smart Bill, Coinzone, etc.

Company overview

3. Soleadify

Using machine learning, the Romanian startup Soleadify creates profiles for businesses in any sector . It has received USD 1.5 million in seed funding from leaders in Europe’s business capital sector, GapMinder, Venture Partners, DayOne Capital, and several business angels on SeedBlink, an funding crowdfunding platform based in Bucharest.

Romanian startup plans to use the funds to increase their marketing capabilities, build partnerships, and improve their technology.

Currently, over 40 million business profiles are kept up to date by the company, which is being used by companies across the United States, Europe, and Asia for sales and marketing purposes, according to TechCrunch.,

Florin created Soleadify in 2018 with his friends to find a solution to customers’ problems with prospecting that were not addressed by existing tech solutions.

 A B2B lead generation tool that automates lead generation and puts leads into your sales pipeline so you can create a predictable sales funnel.

Software like this has no sector  limitations so that it can be used by virtually any business, including digital agencies, freelancers, web developers, and media agencies. With Soleadify, you will save time by focusing on niches and customers using complementary technologies to find essential prospects.

Two web programmers and a marketer started making an application for companies that help you be known on the internet. It’s not the trailer for a new comedy but the story behind Soleadify. This project went through the Innovation Labs startup pre-acceleration program for young people who have a technical startup idea that can change the world.

Soleadify has received $ 1.5 million in funding from GapMinder Venture Partners and DayOne Capital, in addition many angel investors who have funded through the funding crowdfunding platform Seedblink

Sorina Vlăsceanu, Florin Tufan, and Mihai Vinaga, founders of Soleadify, started working on this project last fall. The Innovation Labs platform helped them perceive the path between an idea and reality, allowing them, among other things, to validate their potential. That their software product may have.

In essence, Soleadify is an application for agencies that give digital marketing services, helping them reach potential customers faster depending on the theme, technologies used, or other sector -specific features.

A salesperson with an extensive database

The application works as a database that accesses many websites that would need improvement in a particular field. Through such an application, web developers are connected with potential customers by applying specific algorithms and custom filters that consider their interests and digital skills. At the same time, the application saves time in identifying beneficiaries. Instead of searching Google for potential customers and making an endless list of companies, you have everything in one search and a few buttons away.

“Let’s say, for example, that you have a company that produces SEO software or services. You have 3 Java developers, 4 Java Script, and 2 SEO people. You are a small company, and you need a predictable flow of customers because you have to allocate resources. You have to know how and when if you still have to hire.

By configuring some filters that are fixedly oriented to what you need, we give you the possibility that you will find potential customers who, in the digital market, do not have a good enough presence. I mean poorly made sites, which you can’t access from your mobile. They don’t have Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. But, you can contact them exactly with their needs, exact needs. You can tell them what problems they have and how you can help them “, Sorina explains.

In principle, Soleadify uses artificial intelligence that connects digital specialists with businesses that need help optimizing online features. “We give them the problems, the location, and the sector . We have a large database of sites in the United States, Canada, and Europe “, adds Florin.

The three young people are directly aimed at the global growth of the Soleadify business, considering that in the States and Europe, they have at least 100,000 digital and advertising agencies, their number worldwide being about half a million.

At this point, they started testing the concept with users in the US and Canada, recently launching the closed beta version. “They will have a test period of one month without money, and then, from the conversation with them, we will realize if we have what we need now, if it is easy to use, if we need to change something,” adds Florin. “

It would not be the first time they have redesigned the concept, considering the feedback from people with more experience developing a business.

In November, when they started working at Soleadify, they had a list of possible other businesses and applications: a service to let you know if your email is spam, a CRM for gyms, and a marketplace for hostesses. Some had potential and could still be a reality as a side project. Others were just random ideas. However, Florin still keeps the list on the phone.

“It had to be a product that would be easy to develop in a few months, have the potential to grow, it would make sense for us to turn it into a full-time job. In addition, the same software solution that we once made is very easy to adjust to being moved to a new market or to address a new group of users, so that we do not get stuck in what we start with “, says Florin.

At Innovation Labs, they entered the list of participants in Bucharest near the deadline for the completion of the registrations, thinking that a 24-hour hackathon would be helpful for the evolution of the project.

BRD has been one of the partners of Innovation Labs for the second consecutive year, being the first in which they support a category dedicated to the financial-banking sector. BRD intends to contribute to developing and consolidating the Romanian entrepreneurial ecosystem through tech products for the banking sector.

First, they will know specialists to whom they would not have had access otherwise for opportunities and an overview. “I received a lot of valuable feedback, which helped me a lot on the development side of the UX platform. I redesigned it twice after Innovation Labs. It was helpful because we had some people who could help us and with whom we could discuss our problems. Having a close circle of people you interact with isn’t easy. We were always talking to each other, and our solutions were exhausted. You need to take three steps back to see the big picture “, says Sorina.

“Developers should not be left alone with an application.”

“Developers should not be left alone to work on an application. They associate technical success with an application’s success, ” Mihai.

Also, participating in the Innovation Labs pre-acceleration program motivated them to deliver the product they were committed to much faster. “I underestimated everything I did. I underestimated the complexity. I had to keep the team more organized, and I didn’t know how to do it, ” says Florin, who somehow took the team lead role. Or, as they say, amused, the “administrator of the company” (they created the legal entity to solve the legal and financial aspects of the business).

Even though all three are equal partners, they have shared their roles in the development of Soleadify: Sorina and Mihai work on the web development side, and Florin offer with business development and marketing.

If someone had asked them where they were about 5-6 years ago, the answers would most likely have been entirely different. For example, Sorina (25 years old) discovered that she is highly passionate about ​​web development only in the 3rd year of college, even if she studied at the Polytechnic, at Computers in foreign languages, after her internship. “It didn’t seem much satisfaction to write two lines of code and see an answer in the console. But, when I started doing web, and I saw what was happening and that you can see in the browser, that you have output, I found it extremely interesting “, she remembers. He’s working at Fitbit now.

Florin (25 years old) is a marketing graduate with at least an exciting career. He worked as a waiter, bartender, or restaurant manager to support himself during college. “After that, I found it interesting in terms of customer service, which I’m fascinated by,” he says. After that, he worked in sales and a digital agency – they are their link with this field now, in the development of Soleadify – where he was account and then project manager, and now he works at T-Me Studios.

There he met Mihai (29 years old), the senior on their team. Mihai also finished Computers at the Polytechnic but learned to program from high school. Although he was the best students in programming, at the end of high school, he almost missed a career in this field. “After Bac, I worked somewhere on the construction site during the summer to make money. I didn’t want to be a bartender.

So I went to carry bags “, he says, amused. Although he had finished high school with a high average of 9.30, it was not decided which college he could attend. “Once, a friend called me and asked me where I wanted to sign up. He told me he was going to the computer. So I said <let me come too>”, adds Mihai, who works as a web programmer at T-Me Studios, but on the back-end side.

Between full-time jobs and a startup

Because all three have full-time jobs, Soleadify is, at least for another half a year, the extra project. “We are at the office until 7 pm, we get home, and from 8 to 12 – 1 at night, we work on the project. And the weekends are for Soleadify “, states Sorina.

They currently manage to develop the project themselves, but once the first paying clients come, they are sure they will need help, especially on the marketing side. “We will work on both for at least another six months until we can test the idea. We will decide if we will make Soleadify a full-time project only after trying it, ” says Mihai.

Also, suppose they have managed to develop the product only from their funds. In that case, they say the investment does not exceed 1,000 euros – they are looking at other acceleration programs and angel-type investors who could help them take Soleadify to the next level.

Their advantage over competitors? “We sell to small and medium-sized companies, and the packages are specially created for them,” says Sorina. “There are two companies in the States that do just about what we do, and we’ve added an extra feature. One is Similar Tech, a spin-off from Similar Web. The second is a company called Datanize, which does market research for software solutions. We went to the agencies because we were able to add this extra feature, through which we realized that it has a problem that a service sold by an agency can solve “, adds Florin.

According to young people, the price of subscriptions for Soleadify customers will be between 70 and 260 euros per month. Access to the larger subscription option offers 15,000 leads and 15,000 entries with all information and contact details.

As the next steps for developing the tool with which they were also present at Innovation Labs, the three founders of Soleadify must ensure that the data they take have a high degree of accuracy. “We will probably try different implementations to fail as little and rarely as possible. We take data from millions of sites. It isn’t easy to ensure that that data is of very high quality. And it involves a lot of manual work in studying with other tools. The first step is to do a perfect company profiling.

After that, we will look for two things: to connect as much real-life business data as possible with how many employees a company has and help it filter through an ideal customer profile. It will build the more filters we have, the better the profile. In the first phase, we thought of partnering with someone who has such data. I have already spoken in this direction. We try to give the same kind of data for people who sell subscription software for websites, such as email automation tools, various marketing tools, and anything you can put in a web interface and serve as a market research tool to tell them who all their customers are”, explains Florin.

Company overview

4. Elrond

A blockchain scale-up founded in Malta and based in Romania recently surpassed a $1 billion market capitalization in just under three years. Having made our list of the top 10 Maltese startups to watch in 2021, the fast-growing startup now plans to onboard its following billion users via Maiar, a blockchain payments app.

A company founded in 2017, Elrond (established in 2017), has seen rapid growth despite the COVID-19 pandemic. It has partnered with Samsung and Binance. In our interview with them last year, CEO Beniamin Mincu described the company’s “non-stop on-site hackathon mode” as a major contributor to this stellar scaling up.

The startup now offers Maiar, a mobile phone wallet and global payment app that is a safer, more cost-effective, and more secure alternative to services such as Paypal, Google Pay, or Revolut. In addition, a high transaction rate of 100,000 transactions per second is possible thanks to the Elrond blockchain’s internet-scale capability.

A popular money app that is easier to use and has similar or better features to existing popular money apps is still out of reach for most internet users. Maiar, using nothing but a smartphone, will usher in a new age of global financial technology with both high bandwidth and low latency.

More than 200,000 users have already registered for Maiar early access, which lets anyone create a working wallet in seconds. In a subsequent interview, Elrond’s CEO Biancamin Mincu explained that direct messaging is helpful, easy, and affordable for billions of people. They now can send money using Maiar and the Elrond blockchain.”

Twispay’s acquisition by Elrond was approved earlier today by the National Bank of Romania. Elrond is a blockchain-based distributed application firm.

Additionally, it has received approval to buy Twispay, a company that offers electronic money services.

Following the legislation in force and with the National Bank of Romania’s authorization, Twispay offers payment services and issues electronic money.  

This move will allow Elrond to establish itself as a bridge between traditional finance and cryptocurrency. Many conversations have occurred between the two parties with the Romanian National Bank since the announcement in October 2021. As a result, Elrond officially acquired Twispay after several rounds of constructive discussions.

Under the second Payment Services Directive (PSD2), e-money institutions are permitted to provide payment services and issue electronic money. Furthermore, according to the proposed European Regulation on Markets in Crypto-assets from the EU Commission, licensed e-money institutions will be permitted to issue stable coins that could be traded on a crypto asset trading platform or given to the public in the Union.

Through sharding, Elrond aims to provide extremely fast transaction speeds. As a solution to scalability problems in blockchains, Beniamin and Lucian Mincu, along with Lucian Todea, co-founded the company in 2017.

Company overview

5. Bunnyshell

Bunnyshell, a locally developed cloud-based platform, receives a €750k investment from Early Game Ventures, a Romanian news portal start-up.ro reported. A Romanian business angel whose identity has not been revealed participated in the investment round led by Early Game Ventures.

Early Game Ventures supported Bunnyshell because it was working to make the cloud platform easier and more accessible. A fundamental thesis, “Infrastructure for Innovation,” is further supported by the investment.

With Bunnyshell, the cloud will be accessible to everyone. These problems can be solved within minutes, from installing and launching servers to monitoring and scaling them. In early game ventures, Dan Călugareanu, Partner, says that Bunnyshell democratized cloud infrastructure through its advanced automation, which led him to invest in the company.

With Bunnyshell, you can manage your infrastructure on multiple clouds or on-premise, automate provisioning, deploy apps with one click, and monitor your data in real-time. From the beginning – the coding – to the last operation – production – Bunnyshell simplifies the usage of a cloud platform.

Cloud computing has become a necessity for every application and system today. As a result, it is becoming easier and faster to develop applications with components, tools, APIs, SDKs, and other easily integrated resources, including those for non-specialized engineers. However, cloud infrastructure can be challenging to install applications on. In terms of configuration and installation, it requires the expertise of a system administrator. Bunnyshell allows anyone to install and launch cloud applications with just a few clicks,” says Alin Dobra, CEO of Bunnyshell.

According to Bunnyshell, the company has already partnered with companies such as Digital Ocean or Cloudflare, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and Microsoft Azure. They provide services to international corporations.

On the other hand, Early Game Ventures is a SAAS platform that enables easy infrastructure management across multiple clouds or even on-premises, one-click application deployment for any application, automated monitoring, and operations management.

A fund dedicated to investing in startups in emerging markets in Europe has announced that it will invest in startups that will jumpstart new industries.

Their philosophy is to invest in startups at their earliest stages with coachable founders who have a vested interest and can address large markets. It would prefer the first institutional investor in such startups if the opportunity is real.

In addition to the concierge accelerator, Early Game Ventures runs a highly intensive and tailor-made program for no more than 5 or 6 startups each year.

Company overview

6. Elefant 

In a press release, elefant.ro announces its plans to expand into the Republic of Moldova, among other aims.

A three-year-old store in Chisinau introduced the first delivery point, and in April 2016, the online store Elefant.md opened to the public. It will be the first one in Moldova and the first in the company’s portfolio as of this month when the delivery point in Chisinau becomes a showroom.

Customers can pick up their orders from Elefant MD’s Chisinau showroom and buy some of the items in the store.

Managing Partner of Fribourg Capital, the majority owner of Elefant Online, Ion Sturza, stated, “The development of operations in Chisinau shows the enthusiasm for investing locally and offering our customers eCommerce at an international level.”.

It has over 1,500,000 customers and above 40 delivery points, making it one of Romania’s largest online retailers.

After Emerging Europe Accession Fund (EEAF) joined Elefant’s shareholders, the online retailer recently concluded a new round of financing amounting to EUR 5.5 million. Axxess Capital advised EEAF, a private funding fund that became a major minority shareholder. Among the participants in the new round of investments was Catalyst Romania, which became a shareholder in 2014. The Competition Council must approve the transaction.

Investment funds will accelerate the retailer’s current growth rate of 50 percent annually.

The existence of investment funds that see eCommerce expansion in Romania is great for me. It will use a large part of the investment to develop and expand technology in Central and Eastern Europe,” said Dan Vidrascu, CEO of Elefant.

Elefant-Operation Sectorial has drawn several investment rounds during these 6 years of activity. Fribourg Capital also funded as a founding shareholder, as have Catalyst Romania funds, primarily through JEREMIE.

Founded in 2010, Elefant began as an online bookshop and has now evolved into one of the largest generalist retailers in Romania.

Company overview

7. SymphoPay 

The round was attended by GECAD Ventures, Sparking Capital, and business angels, and legal assistance was given by DLA Piper Dinu.

SymphoPay gives merchants and banks real-time access to payment terminals and integrates transactions with marketing or loyalty platforms. An innovative component of the solution is the possibility to trade for multiple traders using a single terminal. This allows SymphoPay to deliver payment solutions to couriers, insurance brokers, or payment collection networks.

” Merchants are constantly looking for solutions to increase sales and customer loyalty. By integrating the payment component with the entire retail process, a huge competitive advantage is obtained considering that at the time of payment, we have the unique opportunity to launch a new proposal to the customer, thus restarting the cycle of a recent sale “, says Daniel Nicolescu, SymphoPay CEO.

The SymphoPay platform is already integrated with 3 banks, the company being in advanced discussions for enrollment with other banks and merchant networks.

” The SymphoPay platform solves today’s problems for banks and merchants and, at the same time, has the potential to orchestrate the integration of other payment solutions such as QR codes or mobile payments in the future. This is the strategic importance of the middleware platform created by SymphoPay “, says Radu Stoicoviciu, Partner of Early Game Ventures.

The solution is certified by MasterCard and Visa and complies with the PCI-DSS security standards. Companies that use the SymphoPay solution include FAN Courier and eMAG.

SymphoPay was established in 2015 and has received investments of over 1.4 million euros so far. Early Game Ventures is mostly financed by the Competitiveness Operational Program 2014-2020, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund.

eMAG, the online retailer in Romania, has chosen to integrate the SymphoPay payment platform into all Priority Pay machines in showrooms, allowing its customers to pay in interest-free installments without the assistance of in-store consultants. 

Virtually all banks are connected in a single payment terminal, card transactions, and interest-free rates, so the retailer has an integrated payment management solution related to its eMAG platform. In the initial phase, the service is available to Transilvania Bank and Alpha Bank customers and will soon connect to the SymphoPay platform and the other partner banks. 

Company overview

8. FaceRig

In the period of social networks, network surveillance (does anyone remember the Nsa scandal?) And chat, it is increasingly challenging to have a conversation on the web without our face being recorded together with all the data that the sites, without warning us, record. Or maybe not?

There is a solution to anonymity in video chats. Several applications somehow “mask” us, allowing, for example, to make a video call to friends even with the camera on without appearing on the screen. And some of these apps, like the one I’m about to introduce to you, do it in a fun way too.

I’m talking about Facerig, a project born from the minds of four developers from Romania who had already worked for video game and computer applications production companies in the past.

Facerig is a program that uses our camera to reproduce the movements of our face on the screen, the so-called “face motion” technology widely used by the film sector  to create 3D animation products, as in Avatar. Only in this case is a technology accessible to all at a low price. The application is available for just over 9 euros in the Steam online store (the creators of the Half-Life series).

It allows you to transform yourself into a series of fictional characters. In fact, among the possible avatars, there are elven princesses, sorcerers, monsters, and animals of various kinds (wolves, dogs, cats, etc.), to which we will be able to replicate any of our facial movements in real-time. There is also no shortage of human characters,

The number of characters is growing with time, also allowing us to take on the role of very special characters. For example, who has never dreamed of turning into a cheeseburger? Maybe not many, but it is an enjoyable experience.

Facerig, however, is also very useful for allowing us to video call other people anonymously. With the buy of the pro version (which costs 40 dollars), we will be able to take advantage of the avatars in any conversation, integrating them into video chat such as Skype, Facebook video messenger, but an e omeego (a video chat that allows you to video chat with unknown contacts, on the model Chatroulette, so to speak).

In short, the four Romanian developers have made giant strides in their creature, born as an “afternoon pastime for the weekend,” as they define it on the application’s official website.

The next generation of applications and video games will introduce the technology behind Facerig, allowing us to become the protagonists of the action ourselves, with mimicry and movements faithful to our own. We are already experimenting with devices that will enable us to experience a 360-degree virtual reality, such as the Oculus Rift, the viewer we hear a lot about lately and which will probably replace the old motion sensors currently at the base of the console. Like the Wii.

For those who want to start experiencing the thrill of testing face motion technology, all that remains is to try Facerig. And so you will have the demonstration that you do not need machinery worth thousands of euros to be able to reproduce the technologies that we currently see at the cinema in 3D films. 

Company overview

9. Jobful

Microsoft Romania partnered with Jobful to integrate its gamification recruiting platform with Microsoft platforms. As a result, Jobful is Romania’s first gamification recruitment platform.

Microsoft teams up with Jobful to launch the platform on Azure technology and integrate tools like Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Dynamics for HR into the recruiting experience, according to Economica.net.

A recruitment platform built on gamification systems, Jobful was launched in May 2018 to serve young professionals who want to establish careers and companies seeking to improve their recruiting processes. Candidates can also find courses and tests on the platform, while companies can make recruitment more efficient with a suite of tools.

The goal of Jobful is clear: to make recruitment the best experience for both employers and candidates. As early as we realized we would need the most advanced technology to accomplish this, we were excited to partner with Microsoft. In addition, Jobful needs to give job opportunities in the current environment, with layoffs and unemployment rising, said Mihai Cepoi, CEO and founder.

Company overview

10. FashionUP

FashionUP!, an online retailer of clothing, footwear, accessories, home, and garden, expands its product portfolio to the following categories of interest: health, cleaning, petshop, games, and education.

“We decided to meet our customers and expand our product portfolio with local and international brands. The decision came naturally, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, to meet the needs and expectations of our customers. We have given priority to the range of products in the categories of interest: personal care, sports and relaxation, household items, and children’s items, registering a 25% increase in the portfolio in these categories.

We have also integrated the products into new sections: protection and care, cleaning, kitchen utensils, household appliances, accessories, and sporting goods. For 2020, we expect a doubling of the turnover in these categories “, said Mira Anghelescu, FashionUP Operations Director.

During this trial period for the e-commerce area in Romania, the partners from MarketUP (FashionUP brand marketplace, which supports Romanian manufacturers and designers) received additional benefits from a new way of working.

“A much more flexible flow has been conceived and implemented to collaborate with our partners in MarketUP. As a result, the control over sales and receipts now belongs to them. I felt this change was received with enthusiasm and seen as an addition to trust. The new flow, designed to support the relationship with our business partners harmoniously, has unblocked any cash flow. Thus, all MarketUP suppliers invoice, collect and manage their promotions, access a community with over 500,000 buyers, and benefit from exposure to over 1,000,000 subscribers.

In April, the share of sales of MarketUP partners tripled compared to March, a fact generated both by the increase in the number of partners and by the effort made by our team in communicating the promotional actions. Also, online payments have increased 3 times more than before the installation of the state of emergency “, said Mira Anghelescu, FashionUP Operations Director.

Local producers, sellers, and fashion designers want to sell on MarketUP and gain exposure to important fashion e-commerce in Romania.

Following the registration, they will receive the support of a team specialized in online marketing and visibility on a database with over 1,000,000 FashionUP subscribers! And presence in editorial projects.

At the same time, during this difficult period, which the whole world is going through, the FashionUP team came closer to its clients and through the FashionUP Journal, a project through which the team members share their feelings and thoughts.

The story has always had the role of inspiring and making our lives more beautiful. As each person has a personal story and useful activities in the house can serve as a model, the role of this digital journal is to provide customers with a state of well-being. Hope and confidence that #totulvafibine.

In the 10 years of online commerce, FashionUP! It has been differentiated by the highly varied give in the lifestyle area for the whole family, from clothes, shoes, and accessories, to personal care products and home & deco objects. Today, the store sells over 1,000 national and international brands, with tens of thousands of high-quality products, and always aims to give the lowest prices on the market.

FashionUP! brings La Redoute brands exclusively, but also famous brands such as Heine, Guess, Love Moschino, Calvin Klein, Versace Jeans, Nike, Adidas, Pepe Jeans, New Balance, Desigual, Le Coq Sportif, Bensimon, Top Secret, Vans, Lacoste, Esprit, Triumph, Clinique, Bioderma and many more. The product range of the marketplace is enriched daily with new items.

In addition, the store offers over 10,000 products in stock with fast delivery in 24 hours, a dedicated customer service, and the CashUp loyalty program, through which customers receive money back for each order. FashionUP customers! They can pay securely and quickly online by cash on delivery and installments through one of the banking partners. FashionUP! is present in Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Company overview

edited and proofread by nikita sharma