Page 32 - RBI FIntech Atlas 2018

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Spotlight Romania
Center of the capital city of Romania, Bucharest
There are two particularly interesting aspects to the Romanian ntech scene: the development of local startups and the entry of foreign ntechs. The local market is relatively young but already notably dynamic. Raiffeisen Bank aims at growing the local ntech market and in 2019 the bank is developing an educational program for early-stage companies or single founders who plan to establish a tech startup, Elevator Lab Bootcamp.
Some of the most notable early-stage ntechs in Romania are Argentum, Con das, Fintech OS, Instant Factoring, Minutizer, SymphoPay, ThinkOut, Smart Bill. Of the foreign ntechs that have entered Romania, the most active one is Revolut. Orange launched its own service, Orange Money, in 2018, but Romanians also use services provided by other ntechs, which have yet to technically establish local subsidiaries: Monese, TransferWise, N26, Monzo and PayPal.
Raiffeisen Bank is an active contributor on the Romanian ntech landscape, creating a series of events and supporting the ntech startups community, through its collaboration with TechHub Bucharest like The Fintech Month.
There are many actors in the Romanian startup scene. Universities provide talent for the startup ecosystem and the state has developed Start-Up Nation. The state program nances yearly around 10,000 SMEs, ntechs are fully eligible to apply.
In terms of investments & development, the Romanian startup ecosystem also includes a number of VC’s (Gapminder, Early Game Ventures, Gecad Ventures, etc.), accelerators (Techcelerator, Spherik Accelerator, Innovation Labs, Risky Business, etc.) and business angels (www.techangels.ro).
According to Tech.eu, the appetite for developing tech companies is rather strong considering that the investments on the Romanian tech market have grown starting with 2016 on a tremendous pace from €3.6M to €48.4M (2017) and €114.1M (2018).