Flip.ro, Romania’s online second-hand phone market, raised an investment of 1.5 million euros by eMAG Ventures, the CVC of the eMAG group, a leader of the e-commerce market in ZtE.
GapMinder, a VC fund that invests in Romanian companies and Central – Eastern Europe in seed or series A stage, sold its stake in Startup to eMAG Ventures. The VC has invested 150 thousand euros in Flip.ro in two rounds of funding, the first through the Techaccelerator acceleration program.
eMAG Ventures acquired 42.26% of the shares of Flip.ro from minority shareholders for an unknown amount. This is the third investment for the Flip.ro, which had previously pumped 370 mm. euro in funding.
The company was founded by George Moroianu, Alin Luca and Alex Burghelia in 2019 and helps customers sell their old phones as well as other users in safely obtaining tested products.
Moroianu said in a press release that the development of the Flip.ro exceeded the team’s expectations, which encourages them to aim even higher. Now the team seeks to expand to Central and Eastern Europe and become one of the important players in the field.
The founders of the Flip.ro target a turnover of 14 million euros in 2021, an exponential increase from 2.5 million in 2020. At the same time, they plan to double their team to 100 employees by the summer of 2022.
As for the course of the Romanian startup in the early stages, the fact that it managed to prove the importance and profitability of pre-seed investments was done thanks to its corporate potential and vision, as stated by Cristian Dascalu, co-founder of Techcelerator and partner of GapMinder.
In addition to the funding of 1.5 million euros, Flip.ro can also receive know-how from eMAG’s experience in accelerating technological enterprises on an international scale.
In May, Bogdan Axinia, CEO of eMAG Ventures, even revealed that the investment firm is interested in B2C technology companies with a circular economy model because these are the areas of its expertise while looking for solutions that can help its core business to bring value to the ecosystem, both for customers and employees.
Dan Mihaescu, a founding partner of GapMinder Venture Partners, commented that through this partnership Flip.ro has the potential to become a very large company in just two or three years.
