Awards Nominees 2023
The proposed nominees are listed in the six categories: Private Equity Investment of the Year, Later-stage Venture Capital Investment of the Year, Early-stage Venture Capital Investment of the Year, Founder of the Year, Investor of the Year, Exit of the Year, Fundraising of the Year and Exit of the Year. The Award Committee Members will decide on the final nominees and on the final awards criteria. Join the BestInvest conference and learn who are this year’s winners.
Private Equity Investment of the Year 2022
- In July 2022, Arsano Medical Group, the leading medical group in Adria region, invested in Special Hospital Arithera. The investment is part of Provectus Capital Partners’ consolidation of private healthcare services in Croatia and Slovenia via Arsano Medical Group. The consolidation started with the acquisition of Poliklinika Aviva in 2021, followed by a series of add-on investments in 2022: Poliklinika Urocentar and Dijagnostika 2000 (Jan 2022), Special Hospital Nemec (May 2022) and Digitalna Slikovna Dijagnostika (Dec 2022). Arsano Medical Group has over 450 employees and consolidated revenue in excess of EUR 35 million.
- Private healthcare
- In May 2022, Adria Dental Group, the largest dental group in CEE region, invested in Rident dental clinics (Rident). Rident is the leading dental services provider in Croatia, with two clinics in Rijeka and Porec, three high-tech dental laboratories and over 200 employees. The investment is part of Provectus Capital Partners’ consolidation of dental services in the region via Adria Dental Group. The consolidation started with the acquisition of Arena Dental (Jun 2021), followed by a series of add-on investments: Salona Dental (Oct 2021), Dentum (Oct 2022), Fiziodent (Dec 2022) and Dentex (May 2023). Adria Dental Group has over 500 employees and consolidated revenue in excess of EUR 40 million.
- Private dental care
- In December 2022, with the addition of add-on acquisition of Inovativni Trendovi d.o.o for full synergy effect to be achieved, the Fund initiated a reorganisation of the ‘PROSPERUS TECHNOLOGY PLATFORM’ that resulted in the merger of SV Group and Inovativni trendovi d.o.o. into NEOS and NEOS will continue to be market consolidator;
- IT
Later-stage Venture Capital Investment of the Year 2022
Early-stage Venture Capital Investment of the Year 2022
- In September 2022, Feelsgood Capital Partners invested in Croatian-Slovenian food tech company Juicefast. Combining the concepts of a classic juice detox and nutritious ready-to-eat meals, Juicefast offers simple and effective solutions for achieving a healthy lifestyle .Feelsgood EUR 750 thousand in Juicefast, which was a seed round.
+ - Foodtech
- In December 2022, Fil Rouge Capital invested in the company PayTech Native Teams as a part of the EUR 2 million round to support remote and flexible workers. Native Teams is a platform that offers payments and employment tools for freelancers, remote workers, and clients. Their growth has just been phenomenal on their way to breaking the EUR 100 million in revenue.
- HRTech / FINtech
- In December 2022, Fil Rouge Capital and FeelsGood invested EUR 2 million in GameBoost in a seed round. GameBoost is a leading startup providing marketplace services for gamers wanting to boost their rankings. Their revenue grew 500% taking the market by storm. A key distinguishing factor of GameBoost lies in its ability to tackle critical issues within the gaming community.
- Marketplace / Gaming
Founder of the Year 2022
Mate Rimac
Rimac
Advanced hypercars and high-performance electrification technologies
Domagoj Dolinsek
PlanRadar
Saas Construction / Real Estate
Stjepan Buljat
Cognism
B2B sales acceleration software company
Vedran Cindric
Treblle
API monitoring and analytics
Davor Tremac
Fonoa
Global tax automation platform
Nikolina Lauc
GlycanAge
True measure of longevity and healthspan
Miryana Joksovic
Arcion Labs
Cloud-native, zero-code data mobility platform to help deploy high-performance, real-time data pipelines
Dubravko Babic
Eridan
Building fast, sustainable, and accessible wireless connectivity 4G/5G
Viktor Marohnic
57hours
Adventure travel
Marin Bek
Ascalia
Helping manufacturing factories increase productivity using IoT and AI
Edo Mujkic
BiteMe Nutrition
Healthy plant-based protein snacks
Davorin Capan
Neos
IT Consulting company that delivers state-of-the-art solutions in Business Analytics, Software Engineering and supporting Cloud and On-Premise infrastructure.
Fundraising of the Year 2022
- At the end of January 2022, the first closing of the Croatian Mezzanine Debt Fund, one of the three funds selected by the European Investment Fund as part of its financial program with HBOR – CROGIP, was successfully completed.
- Mezzanine Partners explains below that the Croatian Mezzanine Debt Fund will invest in various sectors, excluding real estate and EIF-restricted sectors, and added that they expect to manage the portfolio of up to 20 investments in the individual amount of EUR 1 to 5 million.
- Provectus Capital Partners (PCP) held the final closing of its ASEF fund at EUR 94 million, making it the largest private equity fund in the region. The fund is supported by the CROGIP program co-sponsored by the European Investment Fund (EIF) and the Croatian Bank for Reconstruction and Development (HBOR).
- PCP attracted a broad investor base, consisting of 19 leading EU-based institutional investors, including pension funds, insurance companies, leading regional and international banks and development banks. Since first closing in August 2020, the fund made 17 investments and add-ons in private healthcare, private dental care, specialty retail and veterinary services.
Investor of the Year 2022
- Provectus Capital Partners successfully completed the final closing for their first fund, Adriatic Structured Equity Fund, in February 2022 at EUR 94 million.
- Since first closing, the fund made 17 investments and add-ons in Croatia and Slovenia, which created regional market leaders in private healthcare, private dental care, specialty retail and veterinary services sectors.
- Fil Rouge Capital (FRC) made a couple of high-profile investments in 2022 (SpectreXR, Gameboost, Native Teams, etc.).
- Fil Rouge Capital has so far invested in 130+ Croatian startups, making them one of the most active market participants in the CEE region (2nd most active and 9th largest VC fund in Eastern Europe)
- Enterprise Investors is the oldest and one of the largest private equity funds in CEE, active since 1990 and raising nine funds with total capital exceeding EUR 2.5 billion.
- Enterprise Investors acquired 2 Croatian companies: retail chain Studenac and chain of bakeries Pan-Pek, as well as Intersport operating in Slovenia and Croatia. The Fund has made several add-on acquisitions in the Croatian retail sector via its portfolio company Studenac.
