No, it’s not a joke: the startup that raised the most money in Luxembourg in 2023--from a field of around 500--is one that readers in Luxembourg may not have heard of: Jokr.
The online supermarket has collected $260m since its creation in 2021, and from some promising investors. The concept: groceries delivered to your door in 15 minutes or less, and (duh) ordered via an app.
In September 2023, founder Ralf Wenzel announced $50m in funds raised to the US media. Two further rounds of funding followed in November and December. The startup, brainchild of the Foodpanda founder and former Softbank director, has even gained “unicorn” status with a valuation over $1bn.
And yet, not a word in Dealroom’s ranking of the biggest fundraisers. Dealroom, the grand duchy’s official supplier of data on startups, combines information taken from the media and from the startups themselves, and subjects it to a process of internal verification.
The thing is, while journalists have discussed the newest $50m, none of them mentioned the address where the money landed: 42 rue de la Vallée, L-2661 Luxembourg. In terms of its offering, the startup has virtually nothing to do with Luxembourg--but it’s here.
Along the same lines--but travelling the opposite direction--we would remove, from Dealroom’s numbers, the $30m raised by Etix Everywhere, which doesn’t have any Luxembourg structures anymore (the last one merged with Vantage Data Center in July 2022).
The third problem in Dealroom’s top 10, according to our own analysis, is the €10m announced by Blocktrade. Our understanding is that Alpha Blue Ocean did not contribute this sum to the company’s capital to help its development, but as an advance payment for a new issue of tokens from the fintech. There was no capital increase registered in the commercial register. Alpha Blue Ocean CEO Amine Nedjai hasn’t responded to our queries.
Fourthly, Dealroom makes no mention of by space startup EnduroSat in May: adjusting for this amount puts the company fifth in our own rankings.
Fifth and finally, by CarPay-Diem was not included in Dealroom’s top 10.
It was Dealroom’s competitor Pitchbook that noted that Jokr was a Luxembourg legal entity. However, Pitchbook’s top 15 is not without its own errors.
For example, the amounts named for ANote Music and Greenworlder are not the amounts raised by the two startups during the year, but the amounts raised since they were founded. The former is expected to raise around €500,000 in 2023 and the latter €730,000. Also, as with Dealroom, EnduroSat’s fundraising has not been taken into account.
What’s the point of nitpicking these figures? For one thing, this data helps establish the reality of the “startup nation,” i.e., provides numbers that actually affect policy. Genome Startup’s from 2023 was submitted to the minister in June and has the government logo on its front page, and its conclusions on maturity are based on data from Dealroom, Pitchbook and Crunchbase. Yet, as we’ve seen, the numbers from two of those sources are not perfect--and they probably should be, if the report is to be used at a high level.
This article in Paperjam. It has been translated and edited for Delano.