February 24 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian artificial intelligence (AI) and analytics services provider A4Everyone (A4E) plans to expand towards the Germany, Austria and Switzerland (DACH) market in 2020 after it closed a new seed round last month, its co-founder and CEO told SeeNews.
Sofia-based A4E, registered in 2015 and operating since 2016, will use part of the fresh financing for expansion outside the Bulgarian market, Hristo Hadjitchonev said in an interview for SeeNews last week.
The company has targeted the DACH region for its expansion due to the consolidated nature of the market there.
"If you have a well developed German-speaking sales network in Austria or Germany, you can easily cover all three countries in the region. This is probably the only such region in Europe," the CEO explained.
The investors who have just recently financed A4E are well known to the start-up, because they had already taken part in its previous round of financing in January 2017. They are Impetus Capital, a local private equity fund specialized in expansion capital stages, Sofia-based Eleven, an accelerator and venture capital fund for early-stage investments, as well as an unnamed angel investor, Hadjitchonev said.
These three investors contributed some 660,000 euro ($714,700) to the capital of A4Е last month. Following this latest investment, the start-up has attracted about 1.2 million euro in financing up to date, Hadjitchonev said.
A4E already managed to break even last year and has positive expectations regarding its future financial results.
According to the CEO, if A4E's meets its growth targets during this financial year started in January, the start-up will again be on stable ground and will break even again at the beginning of 2021.
The most recent seed round also focused on expansion of A4E's capacity in terms of deliveries and sales along with the hiring of new employees. According to Hadjitchonev, А4Е, which currently employs 11 people, has plans to increase its headcount to up to 18 employees by the end of this year.
The start-up has no difficulties in finding talent, as it is a well-recognizable name in the data science community, but it also faces the usual difficulties in attracting software developers, because the demand for employees with such skills is very high in Bulgaria, Hadjitchonev said.
A4E, which is focused on providing AI and machine learning solutions to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on a regular basis, also offers its services to big companies, developing various projects for them from time to time. Bisinesses such as Malta-based Credissimo, Bulgaria's Sport Depot and local Bulstrad Vienna Insurance Group are benefitting from the AI provider's regular services, whereas the biggest clients in the second group are The Coca-Cola Company and Telenor.
A4E offers AI-based tailor-made analytical tools for the needs of various sectors, for example A4Insurance, A4Retail, A4Wholesaler and A4Lending.
The company has not yet identified a recognisable competitor at home, because it offers a very specific type of services. In addition, the AI sector itself is still developing across the globe, Hadjitchonev noted.
"Automation and AI are not just a hype - those are absolutely applicable technologies which businesses have already started to seek," Hadjitchonev noted.
($ = 0.924446 euro)